Digital Bridge works to open up new opportunities to impoverished people in our local and global communities who have been left behind in technology. By working with local nonprofits to provide technical service and computer lab donations, we’ve implemented over 20 computer labs spanning across three continents. Our impact has reached as far as improving the quality of education in rural Kenya to providing tools to find employment in inner city Milwaukee. We believe that poverty can be further diminished through technology access from the goodwill of partnered nonprofits and large entity sponsors. At Digital Bridge, our goal is to turn one person’s trash into another’s treasure. In the spirit of the open source movement, we have made our processes available so others can join our mission and help us create a better world.
Of the over 7 billion people on the planet, only about 2 billion have access to the Internet.
We use computers and the Internet to connect to distant friends and family. We use them for education, to find employment, and to increase our productivity. When you think of all of the ways technology improves your life, it becomes easy to see how a ‘digital divide’ has been created between the haves and the have-nots.
This is not limited to the developing world.
The divide is larger for those within developed communities who do not have computer literacy/access than for those in developing communities without computer literacy/access. There are roughly 30 million people here in the United States that do not have access to a computer. At the same time, we throw away roughly 37 million tons of electronics in this country because by current consumer standards they are considered outdated.
Digital Bridge, formerly known as Project Community Computers, was founded in 2009. What started as a student organization at the Milwaukee School of Engineering (MSOE) has grown into an independent, nonprofit organization. Want to help out? Donate, volunteer, or sponsor a lab? Please contact us. We’d love to have you!
