Why I joined NOLO
No One Left Offline has distributed more than 200 devices to low-income Americans across 5 states
Afi with his family in Egypt, 2009
In middle school, I moved from North Carolina to Cairo, Egypt. This meant that I was frequently placed on the wrong side of the digital divide. When my school went remote in response to protests and growing tensions in the country, I was either unable to complete assignments because webpages took 20 minutes to load or because the government completely blocked access to the internet.
Given my history with remote life, you could say that the pandemic was familiar territory for me. But now, instead of being like the 20% of teens in the United States that often fail to complete assignments because they lack sufficient internet access, I attend school in Palo Alto at Stanford Law School. As a result, my internet connection is robust, and my ability to complete assignments is no longer barred by buffering.
Moving 5,600 miles from Egypt closed the digital divide for me, yet it persists just miles away here in California. In fact, 42 million Americans lack internet access at broadband speeds. So as the pandemic accelerated the country's transition to cyber life, the real world barriers these 42 million Americans face likewise intensified. The homework gap grew as children attended school at Taco Bell to access online courses; covid-era rent relief programs that were facilitated online for the first time went surprisingly underutilized; and while many of us were able to sign up for vaccines with the click of a button, those without sufficient internet access were instead placed at the back of the line, being put on hold for appointments that were already booked online by the time an operator answered their calls.
Until everyone has internet access, America will continue to entrench historic inequities between the digital “haves” and the digital “have nots." This is why the digital divide must be closed, and why I decided to join the team at No One Left Offline (NOLO). Just one year in, the team has launched successful partnerships in New York, Oregon, California, and soon Massachusetts, distributing over 200 devices to low-income and minority families across 20 different counties. But with 42 million more Americans that continue to lack online opportunity, we're just getting started.
We could use your help.
Source: Our World in Data
