Our Approach

From June-October 2022, the Digital Equity Council hosted 17 community conversations and solution design workshops in the City’s least connected neighborhoods, reaching nearly 400 residents and 3,000+ through a survey. In January 2023, the Digital Equity Plan was published, and Digital Equity Coalition launched. The following outlines the Coalition’s approach to working together to close the digital divide in Chicago.

A guiding team is a cross-sector leadership group that works to reimagine the relationships among the people, programs, and organizations to achieve systemic change for a community issue. The team acts as the glue for collaboration, serving and supporting the collective work. The guiding team works to ensure people impacted by the issue at hand are at the table when working to understand the problem and assets, and encourages the co-creation of solutions.

Guiding Question

How can we work together to build a diverse and inclusive coalition that removes barriers to digital equity, so all Chicago community residents can utilize quality Internet, devices and digital learning tools to connect to resources and enhance their lives?

 

Guiding Principals

 

As a Digital Equity Coalition (“DEC”), we believe all Chicagoans deserve access and usage of quality Internet, devices and digital learning tools. To make this happen, we will…
  1. Drive digital resources to communities most impacted by the digital divide, including geographic and shared identity communities (“most impacted”)
  2. Ensure digital resources are high quality, effective, affordable, multilingual, and accessible 
  3. Engage people in communities most impacted in the process toward achieving digital equity, especially communities of color and/or with limited resources
  4. Ensure that hiring and training for digital equity-related programs prioritize people from communities most impacted
  5. Be transparent, measurable, sustainable, holistic and effective for communities most impacted