Education, Outreach and Adoption Program

Project Description: AgeSpan will partner with the Massachusetts Healthy Aging Collaborative and its network of Aging Service Access Points to help older adult residents across the state access the internet. This will include assisting older adults with the impacts of ACP wind-down and navigating to other options for affordable internet services. 

Geographies Served: Counties involved include Essex, Middlesex, Worcester, Suffolk, Norfolk, Plymouth, Bristol, and Dukes

Project Description: Baystate Health and the Western Mass Alliance for Digital Equity will work in the targeted geographies to reach residents with the greatest digital divide barriers. One of these projects includes working with organizations to scale outreach and education regarding Affordable Connectivity Program and navigation to affordable internet options and other digital equity resources.

Geographies Served: 101 cities and towns in Hampden, Hampshire, Franklin, & Berkshire counties

Project Description: As part of its Digital Equity Fund, the City of Boston includes three focus areas, including Enrollment into the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP) and Efforts to Improve Telehealth Programming. The ACP* aspect of the Fund encourages community-based organizations, non-profit institutions, social service agencies, local religious groups, and advocacy agencies to apply to help purchase devices for staff/residents, implement new or existing digital skills programs, obtain staff support (such as Digital Navigators), and conduct outreach. The Telehealth Programming aspect of the Fund aims to enhance telehealth access through increased capability for health care providers and increasing support for patients who experience gaps in digital tools.

*Note that this aspect of the Digital Equity Fund is pivoting as ACP winds down.

Geographies Served: Boston

Project Description: The Federally Qualified Health Center (FQHC) Telehealth Consortium will provide the required staff capacity, training and coaching resources, oversight, and evaluation to screen thousands of patients at FQHCs for digital access needs. The FQHCs Telehealth Consortium will inform patients about where and how to participate in digital literacy programs across the state while also screening for other critical needs, including housing, food security, transportation, and employment. The Consortium will also provide digital resources to residents through its expanded Telehealth Navigator Program.

Geographies Served: FQHCs that will receive additional funding through this project are located in Boston, Essex County, and Southeast Massachusetts. 

Project Description: This grant will increase the workforce board’s digital equity initiatives through the Digital Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (JEDI) Consortium, which will assist clients by recruiting, hiring, and training a cohort of 32 digital navigators to conduct outreach and education regarding affordable internet and other digital equity programs and resources.

Geographies Served: The JEDI Consortium will assist clients at the MassHire Metro North Career Centers, MassHire North Shore Career Centers, and the following communities: Revere, Chelsea, Everett, Malden, Somerville, Cambridge, Lynn, Salem, and Gloucester.

Project Description: Tech Goes Home’s (TGH) vision is to help Massachusetts become the first state in which all individuals have access to the digital tools, skills, and connectivity they need to thrive. This grant will support TGH in achieving this vision, by expanding its nationally recognized digital literacy programs in Gateway Cities. Coupled with digital literacy programming is the education and navigation to affordable internet and other digital equity resources.

Geographies Served: Gateway Cities of Brockton, Chelsea, Everett, Lawrence, Lowell, Lynn, Malden, New Bedford, Pittsfield, Quincy, Revere, Springfield, and Worcester

Project Description: UMass Lowell’s higher education community partners will provide the student workforce and cultural competency to drive outreach, engagement, and rollout of digital services, including a cohort of student digital navigators who, along with UMass Lowell and other partner faculty and staff, will create a multi-tiered digital literacy and navigation initiative that establishes a regional help desk at UMass Lowell and advances new digital literacy programs in the service area. Navigation to affordable internet options is a component of this program.

Geographies Served: Gateway Cities of Leominster, Fitchburg, Lowell, Haverhill, and Lawrence, as well as many communities of the Merrimack Valley, Northern Worcester County and the North Shore

Project Description: The goal of the Human Services Alliance for Digital Equity is to increase digital inclusion among eligible end beneficiaries of low-income people with physical, behavioral or cognitive disabilities, and people who are homeless. The Alliance will assist with education, outreach, and adoption of digital equity resources by deploying 15 regionally-based Technology Navigators who will support people with disabilities to obtain devices and learn how to use them. The Tech Navigators will be employed by the eight organizations of the Alliance.

Geographies Served: 235 cities and towns of the Human Services Alliance for Digital Equity service area, in all counties except Dukes, Nantucket, and Bristol*

*one Alliance organization, Riverside, does serve a small number of individuals in Taunton