Community Tech New York (CTNY) believes that building community networks builds community power. Since 2011, we have collaborated with local organizations in NYC, New York State, and other US sites to create community-owned internet infrastructure. Our approach is grounded in the Detroit Digital Justice principles of access, participation, common ownership, and healthy communities.
CTNY works as consultants and educators. We partner with local organizations to co-design and co-create digital ecosystems that support resilience, equity, and self-determination. We build long term relationships in line with a community’s social infrastructure, rather than offering short-term tech solutions. We don't come into a neighborhood, build a WiFi network, and leave–we support groups building out their own projects suited to holistic community needs, created with shared principles, and maintained for generations.
CTNY has critical expertise in data gathering, analysis, training and planning. Our work is focused in the following areas:
Coalition Building and Landscape Analysis - Digital equity requires the coordinated efforts of many partners from various sectors coming together to build shared networks, both human and technical. CTNY provides the leadership and expertise to support emerging coalitions in weaving these many disparate threads together into a cohesive and holistic digital equity strategy.
Teaching Community Technology - As educators, we demystify technology using tools like the Portable Network Kit (PNK), a DIY wireless network-in-a-suitcase designed and developed by our team. We identify and train existing community leaders as Digital Stewards to share, build, and pass on collective knowledge.
Network Buildout - CTNY works with local anchor organizations across New York City, Buffalo, Detroit, and other cities to support community-built and -governed wireless networks. We work on building long term relationships in line with a community’s social infrastructure, in order to develop networks that suit community needs, are created with shared principles, and can be maintained for generations.
Data and Policy - We conduct applied research on broadband access for grounded policy analysis. In December 2021, CTNY and our partners launched the NYS Digital Equity Portal, a vital resource for communities to easily access their digital equity data for advocacy purposes.
CTNY is a member of the Community Technology Collective (CTC), an emergent network of organizations dedicated to digital justice, community technology, and digital stewardship. Community Tech New York (CTNY) and the Detroit Community Technology Project (DCTP) are founding members of CTC and sponsored projects of Allied Media Projects. We are building and supporting healthy, resilient digital ecosystems rooted in community needs by sharing community technology practices, teaching tools, and project support. The CTC is part of an international movement for consentful, resilient, equitable community-governed communications infrastructure. We support sustainable community ownership of data and technology and cultivate the long-term stewardship of neighborhood technologies that support health, well-being, and access to opportunity.
CTNY is Raul Enriquez, Monique Tate, Houman Saberi, and Erica Kermani.
The Detroit Community Technology Project
El Puente
Kounkuey Design Initiative
The National Digital Inclusion Alliance
Parsons DESIS Lab
Philly Community Wireless
THE POINT CDC
The Southern Connected Communities Project
The Western New York Digital Equity Initiative
(led by The John R. Oishei Foundation with CTNY)
Altman Foundation
Brown Institute for Media Innovation at Columbia Journalism School
The Ford Foundation
The John R. Oishei Foundation
The New York Community Trust
Robert Wood Johnson Foundation
Schmidt Futures
Sharon Akkoul
Ruha Benjamin (emeritus)
Andy Gunn
Kokei Otosi
Tonya Phillips
Theo Pride
As founding members of Community Tech Collective and sponsored projects of Allied Media Projects, Community Tech NY (CTNY) and the Detroit Community Technology Project (DCTP) share this advisory board.
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