For too many residents of the nation’s capital, the digital divide is wider than the Potomac at Great Falls and more treacherous. It’s a metaphor that describes the difference between Washingtonians armed with iPads and wired for success and those who can neither type, nor afford a computer. It is a chasm where dreams go to die. “Thousands of Washingtonians never learned how to use a computer,” says Kelley Ellsworth. “They missed it in school, at home, at work. They are our students.”
Ellsworth is executive director of Byte Back, a nonprofit dedicated to teaching basic computer skills to Washingtonians on the wrong side of the divide. This holiday season, when the unemployment rate in parts of the city east of the Anacostia River stands above 25 percent, Byte Back is doing God’s work.
Rather than devoting my Thanksgiving essay to politicians who earned a turkey award for bad behavior, I wanted to write about my favorite nonprofits who deserve our thanks — and perhaps our cash — this holiday season.
• SOME: So Others Might Eat does it all. It was established in the 1970s by District religious leaders who wanted to feed the destitute. Forty years later it is still serving up 1,000 meals a day and so much more. It added substance abuse programs, then services for the homebound elderly. Then came a medical clinic and programs to house and find jobs for the homeless. SOME now develops affordable housing units. One wonders whether District taxpayers and the needy might not be better served if SOME took over the government’s entire human services agency.
• Mary’s Center: For a city rich in first class medical facilities, too many poor people still cannot find access to decent care. Mary Gomez was working as a nurse in D.C. in 1988 when families from Central and South America started moving to the capital. Many were in poor health, and Gomez founded a center to help Latino women. What began as a small clinic in a basement has grown into three full-service health care facilities that take all comers and educate as they help heal.
• Downtown Cluster of Congregations: Terry Lynch can be a burr in the side of anyone who isn’t measuring up to his standards of helping the city do a better job: from housing homeless to cleaning graffiti to educating kids. The center city was once dotted with churches and temples. Those remaining amid the office buildings have joined under Lynch’s long-standing leadership to make the city more livable. He has.
Now more than ever what’s spelling the difference between success and failure in our city is jobs. No job, no money, no housing and so forth. And more than ever, those jobs require computer skills. That’s why Byte Back is number one on my list of worthy nonprofits.
“We are teaching practical skills,” Kelley Ellsworth tells me, such as sending emails and researching services. “And we are training people for those midlevel jobs that are growing in the District.”
Byte Back deserves to grow with donations and volunteers. Byte along. It will feel good.
Harry Jaffe’s column appears on Tuesday and Friday. He can be contacted at [email protected].
