Digital Outreach by Community Navigators
“Right now, our families and communities are facing more challenges than ever. It is time for those of us who have good Internet access, digital skills, tools and devices to use our privilege to help our neighbors who desperately need it.” – Ferdi Serim
ASCEND: Artful Intelligence is well-being for a digital age. It’s Good Medicine.
Creating is the updraft, to improve well-being for life, work and learning.
ASCEND grew from our initial digital equity work in Taos, supporting La Tormenta de Taos, an intergenerational community play made possible by the Taos visiting artist program supported by the Fine Arts Education Act and the New Mexico Public Education Department, filmed by TrueKids1 youth digital media project.
ASCEND provides shared experiences through storytelling and the arts, to equip families, students and community members with skills to navigate their emotions, make sense of their experiences and integrate these into their identities and futures.
Our challenge is to ensure that all families have the information, skills and support they need to take full advantage of existing broadband options. The arts are how
we connect people with digital opportunities, providing them with personal experiences of the empowered learning technology can bring to families’ homes.
In this way, we develop SELLS – Social and Emotional Learning & Life Skills.
All families must have the ability to improve their lives by taking full advantage of opportunities to learn that are promised to come with broadband.
Literacies beyond words
- Life Skills literacies mean understanding what’s going on inside us (social/emotional literacy) and between us (interpersonal and intrapersonal literacies) and are foundational for all other literacies
- Cultural literacies include all the arts in all their forms, including and beyond words (written and spoken). This allows us to use the arts to build bridges of shared experience between cultures and generations.
- Digital literacies are two way – both creating and using digital content, including AI, privacy/cybersecurity, financial literacy and entrepreneurship
Combined, these literacies support Social and Emotional Learning and Life Skills for Artful Intelligence.
We provide a framework for connection and action
What we DO:
ADVANCE Brave Spaces for communities of belonging, safety and care
BRAID cultural wisdom, modern society and digital empowerment
CONNECT intercultural, intergenerational creative expression and exchange
BALANCE human and digital experiences and impacts to protect well-being
MAKE meaning through storytelling, connecting people, place and purpose
RECOGNIZE, ENGAGE & ACTIVATE the talents of our communities
EMPOWER learners with resilience, self-efficacy and well-earned confidence
CO-CREATE to Enact the world we want to live in.
Recognize
the Power in Your Hands. Identify and explore how ASCEND can improve economic mobility and help reduce barriers to 10 vital services.
Activate
Provide experiential learning opportunities to strengthen capacity for well-being in a digital age.
Engage
Collaborate with community schools families in “Learning by Doing” projects to reduce barriers to 10 vital community services
“Being successful in education, work, and life is more about how you feel, act, and think than about what you know.” – (David Goldberg)
