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.
