The SF Connected Program provides seniors and people with disabilities with computer training and access to help keep them connected to friends and family as well as health and other vital information. There are currently over 55 SF Connected sites in senior centers and other community spaces that offer free computer access and training.
SF Connected funds Community Technology Network volunteer recruitment, training, and support programs throughout San Francisco and provides the core support for all of our work. Click here for more information and resources you can use to support the Campaign.
San Francisco has the highest proportion of seniors and adults with disabilities of any California city.
Please sign the online postcard and ask the Mayor and your Supervisor to strengthen the SF Connected Program to help close the ever-widening digital divide. We’ll print out your postcard and deliver it along with all the others we collect at the Board of Supervisors hearing on June 19. Join us if you can!
What Is the Campaign Asking For?
This year’s Keep Us Connected Campaign is asking for funding to expand and improve computer access and learning. Based on SF Connected partners’ experience with the existing program and through months of discussion and planning, we submitted a proposal to the Department of Aging and Adult Services in February to strengthen and expand the SF Connected Program.
This year’s Keep Us Connected campaign goals include:
- More computer trainers, tutors, and volunteer coordinators, including seniors and adults with disabilities.
- Increasing the number of bilingual trainers and tutors and those with experience in assistive technology to better reach those with a loss in vision, hearing, or dexterity or other disabilities.
- Strengthening the ability to measure and to evaluate outcomes.
- Providing small amounts of funding to active lab sites to cover program costs like paper and ink cartridges and to replace mice, modems, headphones, and other small items.
- Offering assistance to individuals to use and to maintain their own equipment through regular tech support events in different neighborhoods and through roving “help desks.”
- Providing ongoing staff support to the newly formed community-based SF Tech Council, creating a public/private partnership to raise additional resources and improving collaboration to close the digital divide in San Francisco.
