Digital Divide: Foster Kids Face Down Digital Barriers

It’s Saturday morning in a small classroom in Manhattan’s West Village and 30 foster kids are tapping away at computers. They’re learning basic computer skills from a teacher at the front of the class. They answer questions about everything from Dropbox to Twitter. The thing is these kids know computers, it’s just they often don’t live in a place where they have access.

"A computer makes a lot of things easier to do," says Raquel Rendon Gill, a 19 year old foster kid who lives with her five brothers and sisters in the Bronx. She says her teenage years have been spent moving from one home to another.

"There was barely computer, barely wifi, so it was kind of hard at first to convince the agency that I really needed it," she says.

And that’s where the New York Foundling come in. They are offering kids and their foster parents the carrot of a free computer and internet for the stick of coming to computer lessons on three consecutive Saturdays. Foundling CEO Bethany Lampland says, who cares if they’re only coming for the free stuff. This isn’t just about kids getting computers

"It is a human right to have access to the internet. What our kids need today are opportunities and a heck a lot of those opportunities happen on the web," she says.

"A lot of us don’t get that chance to show what we have and how we’re really smart," she says. "Everyone sees a foster kid and automatically applies a label: they’re emotionally disturbed, they have physical disadvantages. And it’s like 'no we have a lot to offer just give us time to show you,'" she says.

For Raquel and her fellow foster students, having their own computer can give them the opportunity to show everyone else what they’re made of.