Thousands of Silicon Valley Residents Can’t Get Online. San Jose Has a Plan to Fix That

Though San Jose, California, sits directly in the heart of Silicon Valley, many of the city’s residents don’t have access to the internet. In one of the wealthiest cities in the U.S., more than 100,000 people — including 50% of residents with incomes under $35,000 — are unable to get online. 
Finding a solution to that stark disparity was what San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo and his chief innovation officer, Shireen Santosam, had in mind when they hired Dolan Beckel, an executive fellow with the nonprofit FUSE, in 2016. Now, as the director of the Office of Civic Innovation and Digital Strategy, Beckel is working to create a sustainable model that expands connectivity and digital services across San Jose. 
As internet access increasingly becomes a universal need, Beckel hopes to see cities shift to models like that in Finland — reportedly the first country in the world to declare broadband access a legal right for every citizen. “I want to live in a world where the internet is considered a utility just like water and electricity,” Beckel said. “In 2019, it’s just as important for our well-being.”
Over the last three years, Beckel and his team have worked with the mayor’s office to understand the systemic changes necessary for tackling such a complex issue. Here are four lessons they’ve learned.

1. THINK LIKE AN ENTREPRENEUR

Beckel and the Mayor’s Office of Technology and Innovation knew that in order to create sustainable programs for addressing the digital divide the city needed money. So Beckel did what any smart Silicon Valley entrepreneur would — he identified a need and crafted a deal to fill it. To implement 5G, which provides faster and better digital connectivity, telecommunications companies have been installing compact antennas called “small cells.” But to work, small cells must be situated at high levels with access to electrical power, and the more cells there are, the more consistent the service they provide. The solution? City light poles, the ideal spot to hold small cells. San Jose’s existing workhorse utilities instantly became the most valuable asset the city had to offer telecom companies.
Beckel’s team took the idea to local telecoms and negotiated an agreement to generate income from the city’s existing infrastructure, offering to lease the light poles at a market-based rate in return for guaranteed fast and consistent service. To speed up the process, San Jose used the fees to put in place a team dedicated to installation.
 The remainder of the expected income, estimated at $24 million over the next 10 years, will go into what San Jose calls its Digital Inclusion Fund. Created by Mayor Liccardo, the fund will be used to bring connectivity, devices and digital literacy to 50,000 underserved households, effectively closing the digital divide for these residents. Deputy City Manager Kip Harkness believes the efficiency of the process will potentially save the telecoms millions. “Rather than these companies having to go through thousands of negotiations on each small cell they installed, our offer allowed them to negotiate all at once,” he said. 
These deals have also led to what the city says is the largest small-cell implementation in the country. In 2017, before the project had taken off, San Jose had only managed to create permits for five small cells across the city. These days, Harkness said the city permits around 30 small cells a week.

2. COMMIT EVERY PENNY TO THE STATED GOALS

While most cities place revenue from private deals into a general fund, every penny of the estimated $24 million from the telecom agreements will go into the Digital Inclusion Fund to support citywide programming that addresses the digital divide. San Jose claims it’s the first city in the country to specifically restrict revenue for these purposes.
 “In other cities, that revenue goes into a general citywide fund and then kind of disappears,” Beckel said. “Residents hope that city leaders do good things with it, but there’s no data-driven plan with accountability of ensuring those funds go toward a specific initiative. The Digital Inclusion Fund radically transformed that.”

3. LISTEN TO — AND WORK WITH — THE COMMUNITY

After approving the fund, the city began to consider how it might spend the monies. But when Beckel’s team surveyed residents about their opinions on citywide digital-inclusion initiatives, many expressed concerns about government involvement. 
With a large immigrant population — almost 40% of San Jose’s residents were born in other countries — people reported feeling afraid that the government would look into their immigration status. Others expressed what Beckel referred to as a “Big Brother” fear that anything related to technology and the government would lead to increased surveillance and an overall loss in privacy.
Listening to their concerns, the city decided to take a different approach to offering new services. Rather than providing those services itself, San Jose is partnering with nonprofits and other organizations that already have a track record of community trust, giving them funds but letting them determine community needs and handle operations. This February, for example, the San Jose City Council approved a partnership with California Emerging Technology Fund, a statewide nonprofit with a singular mission of closing the digital divide. Some of the initiatives that CETF is developing include expanding library programs that allow people to borrow digital devices such as iPads; increasing the number of free community courses on how to use various technologies; offering more Wi-Fi hotspots near public schools that lack connectivity; and adding after-school coding classes. Programs are slated to begin this fall.
“I think the city was good at acknowledging what we didn’t know and admitting that it wasn’t our core competency to run a social justice program,” Beckel said. “And we realized that from a trust perspective, it’s sometimes better for the city to fund the programs but not be the face of them.”

4. GET READY FOR A LONG HAUL

Though Beckel’s team has made crucial steps toward improving digital inclusion, Beckel worries that future federal and state legislation will constrain the city’s initiatives. Just this May, the Federal Communications Commission issued a ruling that threatens city authority over 5G infrastructure deployment. Mayor Liccardo has partnered with other civic leaders to endorse federal legislation that would overturn it.
“I think there is an overreach of the FCC, which is focusing on the needs of the private sector instead of the needs of the public,” Beckel said. As legislation keeps changing, it’s unclear whether the city’s Digital Inclusion Fund and the steady stream of funding it created will survive.
But when Beckel began this work, he knew that it would require a long-term commitment. “Digital inclusion cannot be achieved with just one program that we implement in a year and then be done,” he said. “We knew that this was going to require more systemic change.”

This story was produced by FUSE Corps, a national executive fellowship program that partners with local government agencies and produces solutions-driven journalism.
 

This Millennial Is on a Mission to Unleash the Next Generation of Techies

In the next four years, economists at the Bureau of Labor Statistics predict that the country will add more than 1.4 million new technology jobs. Yet, based on current graduation rates, there will be only 400,000 computer science majors to fill those jobs. NationSwell Council member Jessica Santana sees that gap as an opportunity for the 1 million children who attend public school in New York City. At the nonprofit she co-founded, New York on Tech (NYOT), students from more than high schools (and counting) learn the digital skills employers desire. NationSwell spoke with Santana, herself a product of the city’s public-school system who has worked in the tech industry, about how the next generation can diversify tech’s booming business.

What’s on New York on Tech’s curriculum?
From September through June, the program provides about 152 hours of training, which consists of markup and programming languages: HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Python. But we also realize that not every student wants to be an engineer, so they learn about project management, quality assurance, digital media — all these different career opportunities. Afterward, our students get the opportunity to do paid internships over the summer with some of our corporate partners; this year, those included The Bank of New York Mellon and Warby Parker. They get to apply their new skills in a way that’s professional, in a way that gives them the social capital to keep on getting internships after the experience.

About 85 percent of the tech workforce is white or Asian, and 74 percent are male. Do the students you meet express that they don’t see role models in tech?
At the beginning of our program, we survey how many students know somebody in the industry or participate in a technology extracurricular program. Last year, about 90 percent said that New York on Tech was the first time they ever did anything technology-related as an extracurricular program. For many, they’re the first [in their family] to go to college. There’s a huge disconnect in where they can access career advice. So while they don’t formally say they lack mentors, the information we collect shows they do.

On the other hand, it’s also important to know that some students in our program don’t realize they are the only African-Americans and Latinos in technology. We intentionally place mentors of color from diverse backgrounds into their lives, so they won’t feel alone in their journey. If we come from the school of thought that they can’t be what they can’t see, then it’s our job to make sure that we recruit mentors intentionally.

Only 1 percent of New York City students are receiving computer science education. How should public schools be teaching the material?
There’s an opportunity for schools to explore how they teach 21st-century skills outside the actual computer science curriculum. To be a real technologist, what’s currently being offered [in computer science classes] in under-resourced schools is insufficient to move the needle on diversity in the tech workforce. Schools need to ask themselves whether their lessons are industry-aligned, that they’re actually going to prepare students for jobs, as opposed to just meeting educational standards.

Tech is so often associated with Silicon Valley. How does New York’s scene, on the other coast, differ?
The biggest difference between the valley and here is that New York City has diversity. Over there, it’s very homogenous. But here, there are so many pockets of diverse talent that can be employed. Most of the engineering departments stay in Silicon Valley, so you’ll notice there are a lot of opportunities in New York in sales, media and business development, a lot of non-technical jobs, too. It’s not the biggest industry yet in New York. Do I think it has the potential to get there? I’m not sure, to be honest. FinTech (or financial technology) is huge here, and we’re seeing a move toward tech in fashion and food as well.

Jessica Santana, with her mother, at their local Univision station, where Jessica anchors a segment on technology.

How did you personally get involved in this work?
I’ve always been a technologist. I got a MacBook in eighth grade through PowerMyLearning, which was founded by fellow NationSwell Council member Elisabeth Stock. My parents were very strict. When my friends couldn’t come over, it was me and my computer. Having access to that first computer ignited a curiosity in me that wouldn’t have been possible for my friends, who didn’t have machines of their own.

I was a first-generation college student. As soon as I graduated with a master’s in information technology and started working in the industry, I was making four times my parents’ household income. When I realized that, in one year, I was going to make what my parents were making combined in four years, I asked myself, “How did I get here?” That question quickly became, “How do I get others here?” Because going into a technical program was an avenue out of poverty for me. I see how transformative it is for students, who came from communities like mine, to have these skills.

Was it tough for you to break into the tech industry?
When I was still working in the industry proper, as a technology consultant, I learned that the things that made me different made me powerful. It took me a long time to get comfortable with that. Oftentimes, I was the only woman, the only person of color, the only woman of color. As I matured, I started owning that difference: the fact that I was a Latina with curly hair and an accent who wouldn’t let those things stand in my way.

What are you most proud of having accomplished?
To this day, the greatest thing I’ve accomplished, honestly, is graduating from high school. Then being able to go to a four-year college completely transformed the way I saw opportunity, the way I set goals, the way I thought about business and the way I saw myself as a global citizen.

Zakiya Harris of Hack the Hood

For Zakiya Harris, growing up in East Oakland, Calif., meant navigating between two acutely different worlds every day. “I grew up in the hood, but I went to a very affluent school,” she says. “So I spent my days being one of few black people, and I spent my nights being in a predominantly black neighborhood. I believe that really shapes the work that I do, because I’ve always been a bridge-builder.”
Today, Harris is building bridges in the Bay Area as the co-founder of Hack the Hood, an Oakland-based nonprofit that introduces young people of color to careers in technology by training them to design and build free websites for small businesses. The participants, who range in age from 16 to 25, learn crucial skills for the 21st-century economy, and the local businesses establish an online presence that they otherwise might not have had the time, resources or know-how to build themselves. “Hack the Hood is able to level-up the skills of young people and also provide a huge economic development boost for small businesses in their community,” Harris says.
Since 2014, Hack the Hood has sponsored 16 boot camps in eight cities across Northern California. The six-week programs have attracted a total of 234 young minorities from low-income neighborhoods, 92 percent of whom have completed the course. Boot camps begin with an intensive two-week focus on technical skills like website design, coding and social media promotion. “After that, the program transitions into an office,” says Harris, when the young participants are paired with small-business clients and are responsible for self-managing their Web projects. “We want them to feel like freelancers and like a design firm,” she says. The goal is to broaden their relationship to technology. “They start to see their place in tech,” adds Harris. “They don’t just have to be consumers, they can be creatives.”
The local businesses that sign on also reap enormous benefits. Hack the Hood typically works with mom-and-pop shops whose owners aren’t necessarily comfortable online or on social media. “A lot of these folks are small, and they don’t want to be thinking about their website,” Harris says. And because of the rapidly shifting demographics of Bay Area neighborhoods, businesses that lack an online presence aren’t reaching the new residents moving in. “We want our local owners to be more visible,” she says. “When people are Googling the new coffee shop or the closest tax preparer, we want those people who’ve been the backbone of our city to show up in the search results.”


Join the cause! Use your talents to help open doors for low-income, high-potential youth. Volunteer your time as a mentor in the Bay Area or elsewhere in the US.


Hack the Hood participants don’t just gain valuable experience working in tech, they also develop soft skills, like project management, public speaking, networking, perseverance and more. And besides learning to write CSS and HTML code, they’re given a chance to explore the more creative aspects of maintaining a Web presence through site design, photography and videography. Realizing their true passions and talents helps them find their niche in technology, says Max Gibson, a lead instructor and creative strategist at Hack the Hood. “At first, they might not have an idea of what they want to do with their lives, or what their real strengths and skills are,” Gibson says. “So for me, it’s really about allowing them to discover what those things are, and then pointing them in the right direction.”

For her part, Harris sees Hack the Hood as addressing a new kind of gulf between the technological haves and have-nots. “People typically think of the digital divide as those who have Internet access versus those who don’t,” she says. But that idea is quickly becoming outdated. “The issue now is the knowledge divide. Do you know how to pull up the hood and understand the code beneath it? Do you understand what your digital footprint is going to look like?”
Closing that knowledge gap has the potential to impact communities far beyond the Bay Area. “Young people of color are going to create platforms and opportunities in tech that no one else has,” Harris says, pointing to the apps — such as those tackling police brutality, immigrant rights and other issues affecting communities of color — produced at recent hackathons attended by minorities. “My generation is passing on a planet that has many, many problems. Having a diversity of voices in the decision-making process is going to allow a diversity of solutions to come through.” Technology provides important tools for solving today’s problems, Harris says. “It’s imperative that we make sure every young person has access to these tools so they can address the problems of our future.”

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The 2016 AllStars program is produced in partnership with Comcast NBCUniversal and celebrates social entrepreneurs who are powering solutions with innovative technology. Visit NationSwell.com/AllStars from November 1 to 15 to vote for your favorite AllStar. The winner will receive the AllStar Award, a $10,000 grant to help further his or her work advocating for change.

Bringing Foster Care Into the 21st Century

Since 1869, The New York Foundling has helped foster children and at-risk families. Established by the Sisters of Charity, the organization has expanded its programs and services to respond to the city’s greatest needs. It now serves more than 27,000 children, families and other individuals each year with educational and vocational programs as well as mental health and family support services.
But The New York Foundling’s newest initiatives tackle the digital divide. The Digital Inclusion Program, launched in 2015, provides basic tech education, free laptops and five years of internet service to foster kids between the ages of 12 and 19.  The Foundling’s Tech Workforce Development Program, for ages 18 and up, selects promising youth from among 15 area foster-care agencies and enrolls them in tech-training programs at Per Scholas, Year Up or General Assembly.
“These youth are very capable,” says Olivia Jones, the tech program coordinator for The New York Foundling. “They just need a chance to prove it.”
Check out the above video to learn about one foster youth’s journey toward a fulfilling career in software development.

How Old Computers Can Make a Lifelong Impact on Low-Income Kids

Between personal computers and the machines in computer labs, there are about as many computers on college campuses as students. But when these electronics become obsolete, what happens to them?
If tossed into landfills, they become a big environmental hazard. But the University of Colorado at Boulder (CU) has figured out how to turn them into a solution that helps out low-income students.
The school’s program, Computers to Youth, runs camps for inner-city students, teaching them about life in college and how to refurbish old computers. At the conclusion of camp, each student takes home a computer.
Dave Newport, director of CU’s Environmental Center, tells KUSA that there are 10,000 computers on campus — all of which are regularly replaced. “We can’t give away enough of these,” he says. The program “helps protect the environment. It reduces cost. But the best part is, it empowers students.”
Basheer Mohamed, a sophomore engineering major at CU, can vouch for that. The immigrant from Sudan received a computer from Computers to Youth when he was in high school. Prior to that, his family couldn’t afford one. “Between us and more privileged kids, it was really hard to keep up with them,” he says. When he got his computer, he excelled in school, became interested in engineering and even researched and applied for the scholarships that now are funding his education.
What might he be doing if he never received that rehabbed computer? “If anything, I’d probably be going to a community college if not just working,” Mohamed says. “I don’t want to know where I would’ve been without it.”
Thanks to Computers to Youth, that’s one computer kept out of the landfill, and one mind sparked to great achievement by higher education.
MORE: How to Bridge the Digital Divide
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