SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (WAND) - Comcast announced a donation of 100 laptops and $10,000 support for STEM programs in a Thursday visit to the Boys & Girls Clubs of Central Illinois in Springfield.
The company's Illinois Digital Equity Tour began a tour of five central and northern Illinois locations on Oct. 7 with trips to Chicago's south suburbs and Rockford, then the Developmental Services Center in Champaign and the Decatur Family YMCA earlier in the week. The Springfield stop was the final leg of the tour.
Comcast said at the end of its tour, it has delivered 500 laptops and $50,000 in funds to community-based organizations to support digital skills training and other activities designed to close the digital divide.
“We have the resources in place in Central Illinois and elsewhere to end the digital divide – to connect low-income kids, families, seniors, veterans and people with disabilities to the power of the Internet – right here, right now, and we don’t even have to put a shovel in the ground,” Jourdan Sorrell, Comcast’s senior manager of external affairs, said in the Springfield tour stop.
“Digital equity is one of the most important social justice issues of our time,” said BGCCI CEO & Executive Director Tiffany Mathis. “We appreciate Comcast for continually stepping up to support the club and our STEM programs, connecting our members to the Internet and helping us deliver on our mission ‘to enable all young people, especially those who need us most, to reach their full potential as productive, caring, responsible citizens.’”
The tour's timing is in line with the 10th anniversary of Comcast's Internet Essentials, which is a broadband adoption program for low-income households with grammar, high school and college students, seniors, veterans, people with disabilities, and public housing residents enrolled in public assistance programs, which Comcast said range from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and the National School Lunch Program (NSLP), to the federal Supplemental Security Income (SSI).
Since launching in 2011, Comcast said Internet Essentials has connected over 10 million Americans to the Internet at home and more than 1.3 million in Illinois alone.
Sorrell said central Illinois resources to end the digital divide include a combination of:
- Programs like Internet Essentials that can connect low-income households to the Internet;
- The BGCCI and a host of additional partners that have all come together to support and deliver programs designed to close the digital divide and build digital skills;
- Comcast’s network, which reaches almost the entire city of Springfield and provides the same services in every neighborhood – regardless of zip code. Comcast has 1,000 miles of fiber and other network infrastructure in Springfield, including more than 28,000 WiFi hotspots in and around the city. Comcast’s network allows the company to provide Internet Essentials to households across the city and the region and help make sure no one is left behind; and
- The federal government’s Emergency Broadband Benefit program, which provides eligible households a discount of up to $50 a month towards broadband service, and up to $75 a month for households on qualifying tribal lands.
