E2D-Eliminate the Digital Divide obtains laptop donations from generous corporations and refurbishes them in student-led technology labs to distribute to student families in the local community. E2D (“Eliminate the Digital Divide”) is a non-profit agency that was founded due to two simple questions that an enlightened 12 year-old girl asked her parents in October 2012:
1) How can all kids in our
school do their homework and projects successfully if some of their families are too poor to own digital technology?
2) What are we doing to do about it? This young girl decided that the digital divide between those who have computers at home and those who do not was a social inequity…and one that she resolved to try to fix. Since then, a broad-based grassroots coalition of municipal leaders, college students, corporate supporters and hundreds of civic volunteers in the Charlotte Region have banded together to study the pervasiveness of digital exclusion and to create solutions one family at a time. As of the end of 2015 over 1,000 families have bridged the digital divide using laptops, digital access and computer training sourced and provided by E2D. Children who were spiraling downward as just “the next generation of historical multi-generational poverty” have begun to use their new computers to vault quickly upward back to where the larger student body is thriving. Early test metrics are supporting the fact that E2D students are experiencing to-date unheard of growth in their math and language aptitude tests. The National League of Cities, Next Century Cities and Google Fiber declared E2D to be “The Most Innovative Digital Inclusion” program in the US at their annual conference in November. As satisfying as it is to say that E2D has closed the digital gap for 1,000 families, we know that the solutions required to eliminate the digital divide for ALL remaining students in Charlotte totals at least another 24,000 student homes. E2D is committed to partnering with the City of Charlotte, Mecklenburg County and CMS as well as the local corporate and philanthropic communities to build and scale the effective organization that can execute the best plan to equip all remaining students with the educational tools that will make them successful in the classroom and prosper, ultimately, throughout the rest of their lives.
