Highest cancer rates in Canada in an impoverished area of Cape Breton with
an extremely high rate of unemployment as well, more or less written off
by the federal government and little to proceed on its own.
I worked with them - C\CEN is the Centre for Community and & Enterprise
Networking; we used everything from email through Websites and IRC for
conferences, discussion groups, free access, etc.
The tarponds were peripheral; there were other agencies working on them,
all generated from within the community. The site was/is experimental.
Other uses of the Net along these lines including wiring Aboriginal groups
in Australia for reconnecting dreamtime among dispersed familial groups;
these connects can use local language password for entrance, preservering
the sacredness of the tradition. Think of this: tripled spaces here - that
of the dreamtime; that of the geographically-dispersed group; that of the
Netspacings themselves.
Alan