Bridging the Technology Divide in St. Cloud

We recently began partnering with Promise Neighborhood, an organization in St. Cloud that engages Talahi families and helps them achieve their educational, economic and community aspirations.

To do this, Promise Neighborhood offers a variety of family, community and parenting workshops to ensure that students receive the support and encouragement needed from home and community.

To help them get their programs started, we donated a total of nine laptops – three for staff and six to make a mini lab for client use. We received a nice note from Promise Neighborhood and wanted to share it with you, our supporters who make projects like this possible.

The computers are fantastic.What I expected to happen is happening. The equipment has allowed us to provide our clients with access to the Internet, help them gain familiarity with hardware, basic key board skills, computer terminology, introduction to Microsoft office and basic computer skills.

The equipment has also enhanced our ability to communicate and increased our efficiency and effectiveness, allowing us to continue to grow as an organization. The size of our database has increased by 35%. We are more capable of doing targeted outreach. We have clients creating tracking databases for things such as client needs and food and clothing distribution. Those same clients have no access at home, no hardware and on the first day needed help logging onto the computer. We have also increased the number of parents that have access and have used the local school district data tracking tool, Skyward. Skyward tracks, attendance, behavior and academics.