Champaign County residents now have a place to focus on poverty and related issues year-round.
Called CU-Citizen Access, the site is overseen by UI journalism professors Brant Houston and Rich Martin. The News-Gazette is a collaborator on the project, its staff supplying stories and content for the site, along with faculty members and students from the UI journalism department.
The site is designed to offer a place for citizens, journalists and UI students to share news, raise and discuss issues, find assistance and suggest solutions.
“It is intended to bring together all parts of the community to disclose and deal with the issues associated with citizens living in poverty or on low wages,” according to the About Us page on the Web site. “The project also is intended to create as many avenues as possible for citizens to address these issues, whether through this Web site, in-person, or through e-mail, social networks such as Twitter, cell phones, photos and news stories.”
Funding for the project comes from the Marajen Stevick Foundation and the UI, with a matching grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. The Web administrator, Acton Gorton, is a UI journalism graduate, as are project reporters Shelley Smithson and Pam Dempsey. The local firm OJC Technologies helped create the site.
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