The first California Listening Tour of the year is a wrap. It was great returning to Los Angeles (quick shout-out to my hometown, Korea Town) to get insights on how nonprofit organizations want to leverage technology for their front line community work. We are grateful to the organizations that hosted us and shed light on these capacity building opportunities. Much love to Maegan at IDEPSCA and VozMob, Isalia at Vision y Compromiso, David, Manny, and Omar at East Los Angeles YMCA, Ken at Advancing Justice, and Gilda at the Urban Sustainability Department of Antioch University. Throughout our conversations, these are the trends of how technology could play a role in their nonprofit efforts:
- From managing contacts to tracking people who come to events, organizations are looking to adopt different database technologies to support their community organizing efforts.
- With so many trainings filled with tech jargon and mostly in English, organizations serving the Spanish-speaking community are looking for more affordable and accessible training materials to increase their staff's technology capacity in order to move onto needed tools.
- Beyond using social media, organizations are interested in taking a step back to think strategically about the tools and communications channels they use, especially to increase productivity internally and externally.
- Even in a large city setting like Los Angeles, there still exists a need to find affordable internet access. This is even more critical for grass roots organizations that are engaged in on-the-ground community work and not directly connected to a permanent office.
These insights and meetings will help us develop appropriate resources and mentoring programs for next time we hit the road in April. We hope to collaborate with these organizations to find the most strategic ways to implement technology in their existing social justice work. We welcome any other bilingual trainers with shared resources or tools to address these emergent themes. Email us directly to join the conversation. If you or your organization wants to collaborate on these opportunities for knowledge-sharing, please get in touch with us. Our inboxes and telephones are always open to you.