KC Digital Drive awards $20K in digital literacy micro-grants; aims to boost digital inclusion

KC Digital Drive announced today its first cohort of micro-grant recipients for “KC Goes Tech,” a new program that helps community organizations teach digital skills, such as how to use email and stay safe online, and it connects participants to funding for home internet and a computer they can take home after completing 15 hours of training.

Leslie Scott

The KC Goes Tech beta pilot will provide each of the 10 training partner organizations a $1,000 stipend or honorarium to a staff or community member who will join a trainer cohort and deliver digital training to the organization’s clients. Another $1,000 can be used in whatever way the recipients would like.  

“We saw an urgent need to help direct service agencies right now by providing new training tools plus a small dose of financial support so they can better help their clients build digital skills and more fully participate in our digital society,” said Leslie Scott, digital inclusion program manager at KC Digital Drive. 

Micro-grant awardees for the beta cohort are:

• Black Family Technology Awareness Association
• Central Avenue Betterment Association
• Healing House
• Jewish Family Services
• ArtsTech
• reStart
• Hispanic Economic Development Corporation
• The Toolbox Small Business Resource Center
• Sala de Arte
• DAVE’s Place Community Impact Center

Launched in July 2022,  KC Goes Tech was inspired by the proven and cost-effective “Tech Goes Home’’ program founded in Boston in 1999 and expanded into Chattanooga by one of KC Digital Drive’s peer organizations in 2015, each of which has trained thousands of participants.

Micro-grants are designed to support grantees’ ability and capacity to deliver digital literacy services, to connect diverse service populations, to build upon the ecosystem support model of Tech Goes Home and adapt it for Kansas City with key core partners, to provide technical assistance to a larger network of training partners, and to identify additional partners to connect program participants with more advanced training opportunities to help them fulfill their digital aspirations.

Click here to reach out to Scott to learn more about KC Goes Tech, a train-the-trainer effort for direct service organizations.

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This story is possible thanks to support from the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, a private, nonpartisan foundation that works together with communities in education and entrepreneurship to create uncommon solutions and empower people to shape their futures and be successful.

For more information, visit www.kauffman.org and connect at www.twitter.com/kauffmanfdn and www.facebook.com/kauffmanfdn