OTAN News
Advocating for Digital Equity
A Facilitator Guide for Catalyzing Immigrant and Refugee Community Members
The Transforming Immigrant Digital Equity (TIDE) has “designed and piloted an ecosystem model for equitable English language learning and digital resilience,” for immigrants and refugees advocating efforts around the Digital Equity Act of 2021. For there to be an equitable digital resilience ecosystem with people learning English as an additional language, “we must center the experiences...of adult immigrants and refugees,” and recognize them not only as “recipients of services, but also co-designers, subject matter experts, community advocates, and .... agents of change.”
This facilitator’s guide created for adult education practitioners, staff at immigrant and refugee serving organizations and other people who work directly with multilingual adult immigrant and refugee learners, builds on the work of supporting “immigrants’ and refugees’ right to tell their own stories about lived experiences with the digital divide.”
The end goal for facilitators are new immigrant and refugee stories to be used for digital advocacy. Activities and strategies within the guide support this end goal using mentor work from The Immigrant Voices Podcast Project and The Change Agent to name two. This guide is organized into three learning modules:
- Learning About and Reflecting on Digital Equity
- Collecting Data on Digital Equity, and
- Using Storytelling for Advocacy.