I’m just curious if anyone can point me to non-profit, for-profit, or government tv or internet series or broadcasts that focus on educating recent immigrants, underprivileged, poor, or people in remote areas.
To be clear, I’m not looking for programs like the Harlem Children’s Zone, that are actually classes that one attends. I’m looking for materials that are broadcasted or put online and people can choose to use them at their leisure (or when they come on TV). Also, I’m not only looking for programs geared towards children. I’m also interested in programs for adults.
The Public Broadcasting System (PBS) was originally started to provide programming to these populations. They may be a good start. Many of their programs have affiliated websites that are accessible through PBS.org.
There are also some satellite channels that provide some programming. The Create network is one such channel.
It would be helpful if you could narrow down your audience and the kind of material you’re looking for.
There are a lot of materials for “new readers”, meaning adult people with low literacy levels and poor English. We get “News for You” here in the library, for example, which is a little newspaper geared towards adults but written in simple English. (Frankly, I think it’s at a smarter level, if not a higher reading level, than USA Today sometimes.) They have a website, newsforyouonline.com, that has some news stories and such on it.
There’s also Simple Wikipedia, also written in simple English - doesn’t have a ton of articles yet, but it’s a thought. simple.wikipedia.org.
We, like many libraries, also have a whole “new readers” section, with a lot of really helpful books that tell you things like how to write a check and open a bank account. Of course, you have to come into the library for that, but there’s bookmobiles and such.
My audience is a group from another country who are interested in learning how America addresses the educational needs of these groups, whether they be children or adults, so (I presume) they could see if these sorts of materials and broadcasts could be emulated in their country.
Unfortunately, I can’t really narrow it more than that, because that’s the way it was posed to me.