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PovNet

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There are times when, in this age of rapid technological change, I’m tempted to think that Slaw’s five and a half years of life make it a veteran. Some research I’m doing has led me back to one of my root interests in poverty law and to a true legal veteran on the web, PovNet. This anti-poverty group gives legal advocacy a central role, which should make it of interest to Slaw readers. From their website:

PovNet began in 1997 with a meeting attended by community representatives from all over British Columbia. Not a computer in sight. Advocates talked about what they wanted this “new” technology to do and whether or not we could use it to communicate with each other cheaply.

Turns out they could. PovNet does an admirable job of keeping up with the times, offering to update us via all the usual suspects: RSS, Twitter, and Facebook. It’s not as clear as I’d like it to be, though, what exactly the various “feeds” provide. From what I can tell, for example, their RSS feed pushes some but not all items from their informative News Page. By contrast, their Twitter feed seems to contain more items than appear on the News Page, so that’s the feed I subscribe to.

Comments

  1. Kara Sievewright
    January 17th, 2011 at 1:32 pm

    Thanks for highlighting PovNet! And thanks for the feedback.

    We are always looking at ways to improve the site so we will make sure that we explain on our site what kind of information our different feeds provide.

    For your readers, our RSS feed provides all the recent anti-poverty and poverty law information on our site including events, news, resources and job postings. Our Twitter feed and Facebook page provide recent highlights from our site as well as other links and news from other organizations.

    Thanks,
    Kara
    PovNet Web Manager

  2. Drew Jackson
    January 20th, 2011 at 12:53 pm

    It’s highly cool to see PovNet mentioned here on Slaw. PovNet has been a pioneer in helping poverty law advocates and community workers in British Columbia (and beyond) connect with each other and with online resources. At Courthouse Libraries BC, we’re coordinating a national initiative, Just a Click Away, to enhance how technology can be used to deliver legal education and information to the public. PovNet is one of seven websites featured in a webinar series this month and next, highlighting models used to deliver public legal education online. The webinars lead up to a national conference in Vancouver on February 23 & 24. The webinar that includes PovNet is coming up on Tuesday, January 25, and also features two other leading public legal education portal websites: ACJNet (now LawNet) and LawHelp.org.