The website, which is geared towards low-income individuals, will provide information covering safety/emergency services, education, health, economic livelihood and civic engagement.
The campaign will be a 24 month drive to raise resources and awareness and will include the launch of prototypes in several cities.
It can be a place on the internet where people go to easily find services and opportunities that the physical isolation caused by being poor or living in rural communities currently make inaccessible or difficult to find, said Senator Obama.
In addition to Senator McCain and Senator Obama, One Economy has built an Advisory Committee of twenty leaders to guide the initiative, as well as a list of more than 500 individual and organizational endorsers for the Public Internet Channel.
Mayor Martin O’Malley of Baltimore, Maryland announced that the City of Baltimore will be one of the first municipalities to use the network to provide information and resources to its citizens.
The Public Internet Channel will build upon One Economy’s five years of operating the ‘Beehive’, their bilingual consumer website that provides resources and information for low income Americans. To date, the Beehive has received more than eight million visitors with 20% of that traffic in Spanish.
One Economy has received financial commitments for the Public Internet Channel from The Allstate Foundation and The Ewing Marion Kaufmann Foundation, with other commitments pending.