Guest post: 2008 Tech Savvy regional winner Kristine White

Only 11 days left until applications for the 2009 Tech Savvy awards are due! Here’s a guest post from Kristine White, one of the four regional winners of last year’s award. Visit our website to submit your application.

Winning the regional Verizon Tech Savvy Award was an honor for Computers for Families in Santa Barbara. Our program began 12 years ago and is successful in large part as a result of donations and grants, the Verizon Tech Savvy Award among them. However, since “CFF” originated here and is so local in scope, we seldom interact with others engaged in the same work. Winning the award and attending the National Conference on Family Literacy made it possible to network with people from similar organizations and projects and to come away inspired.

Meeting the national winner, Deb Socia from the Technology Goes Home Project, enabled me to see technology I’d not seen! We also talked in-depth about our respective projects and the successes as well as the challenges. I was excited to meet the other regional winners and talk to them about their programs, too.

I encourage you to apply for the Verizon Tech Savvy award and also attend NCFL’s 2009 conference. Listening to the stories of various speakers and the information presented in sessions again expanded my horizons and awareness of both the challenges many people face as well as the solutions. I am most thankful.