Access to Technology
U.S. Department of Commerce data from 2001 indicated that 78.9 percent of people in families making $75,000 or more had Internet access, compared to 25 percent of people from households earning less than $15,000 a year.
Access to technology
In August 2006, United Way of Massachusetts Bay (UWMB) joined One Economy Corporation to launch Beehive Boston. One Economy is a Washington-DC-based nonprofit with a mission to maximize the potential of technology to help low-income people improve their lives and join the economic mainstream. Their product, the Beehive, is a multi-lingual, online, self-help portal offering national and local consumer information on jobs, money, health, school and family. Currently, sixteen states and 30 locations have a Beehive.
Critical to the success of the Beehive, One Economy combines an ambitious policy agenda to ensure Internet access in affordable housing units with strategies to make sure that people are able to actually use the technology.
UWMB collaborated with One Economy to develop a Boston-based portal that will integrate local resources and information. The Beehive will direct consumers to already-existing web resources provided by federal, state and local agencies as well as nonprofit organizations. The content is written at a sixth grade literacy level, and is available in both English and Spanish.
Across the country there are countless examples of how the Beehive has changed people’s lives because they became more employable, found access to healthcare, learned how to fight childhood obesity, or learned how to qualify for a tax credit.