Here are the 8 winners in the Digital Literacy Alliance’s first round of grants

Early this year, a coalition of groups and stakeholders intent on lessening the digital divide in Philly called the Digital Literacy Alliance was formed and it had a good amount of money — a seed fund of $850,000 — to give away to individuals or organizations with ideas.

Out of 101 total submissions to the Digital Literacy Alliance’s first round of grant opportunities, eight winners have been announced to receive a total of $167,010, with each grant ranging from $10,000 to $25,000.

As Andrew Buss, director of innovation management at the Office of Innovation and Technology, said during the initial announcement, the grant opportunities were left pretty wide open intentionally to encourage any creative solutions in the neighborhoods and communities most impacted by digital literacy divide issues.

“I think one of the purposes of trying to get into some of these different communities and get them to submit proposals is that we don’t really know what they might submit, and there might be something really interesting in there worth funding,” Buss said.

"You’ll either end up in a war or a riot." @MightyWriters students on the danger of sharing fake news https://t.co/XoqaRdcSzC

— Billy Penn (@billy_penn) May 20, 2017

Without further ado, here are the winners and descriptions of their proposals:

• Center for Literacy ($23,010) — “Center for Literacy will combine face-to-face classroom activities with online courses to better serve English as a Second Language students in Southwest Philadelphia.”
• Generations On Line ($25k) — “Generations on Line will introduce interactive tablet training for seniors by partnering with churches, housing developments, and other senior organizations across the City.”
• Lutheran Settlement House ($25k) — “The Resources & Resilience Digital Education project will provide homeless mothers with real world training on how to use technology and online tools to address housing, employment and parenting needs.”
• Mighty Writers ($20k) — “Mighty Writers will launch Checkology, a journalist-led online platform through which teachers and students learn to differentiate between different kinds of information.”
• PhillyCAM ($15k) — “PhillyCAM will offer inter-generational, hands on fellowships in media literacy where participants learn how to access, analyze, evaluate, create and participate with digital media.”
• SEAMAAC/United Communities ($25k) — “This joint initiative between SEAMAAC and United Communities will open a technology lab and offer computer literacy and ESL classes to a diverse population of residents in Southeast Philadelphia.”
• Technology Learning Collaborative ($10k) — “This group of digital literacy providers and advocates will present the TLC Series: an annual conference plus four curated trainings for digital literacy professionals.”
• VietLead ($24k) — “The VDigiLab will provide a technology center intended to close the severe digital literacy gap that exists due to language capacity among Philadelphia’s Vietnamese community, particularly between younger and older generations.”