Join us for Digital Inclusion Week – October 8th, 2026
Digital Inclusion Week celebrates the work happening across the country to ensure everyone can participate fully in our digital world. This year, digitalLIFT is hosting our fourth annual Day of Equity, a full day of webinars discussing the challenges, opportunities, and possibilities shaping the next chapter of digital inclusion.
- THE LANDSCAPE – The Next Chapter of Digital Equity: What’s next for digital equity after BEAD and the reinstatement of the Digital Equity Act? We’ll explore funding, sustainability, and why digital inclusion remains essential to healthcare, workforce, education, and community participation.
- THE DISRUPTION – Generative AI: What It Means for Our Communities: AI is changing how people work, access information, and navigate essential services. We’ll explore its opportunities and risks through a community and equity lens.
- THE APPLICATION – Beyond the Basics: Teaching Health, Insurance & Utility Portals: Digital skills go beyond email and web browsing. Learn practical strategies for helping people navigate the online systems they increasingly rely on for essential services.
- THE PEOPLE – Digital Navigators as Community Change Agents: Digital Navigators build trust, connect people to resources, and help learners gain confidence. We’ll explore their evolving role and how to better support the people doing this work.
- THE PROOF – Telling Your Digital Equity Story: How do we demonstrate that digital inclusion is worth investing in? We’ll explore ways to connect program data and lived experience to outcomes that matter to funders, policymakers, and communities.
- THE FUTURE – Where Do We Go From Here?: We’ll close the day with a cross-sector conversation about what digital equity could look like five years from now and what it will take to get there.
Follow this link to read more about digitalLIFT’s activities and for registration links to our Day of Equity webinars happening on October 8.
Thank you to our Program Sponsors!
We’re incredibly grateful to 35 Mile Foundation and Mission Telecom for helping make these learning resources more accessible to communities across the country. Email corporate@digitallift.org to learn more about sponsorship opportunities.
“All Courses and Curricula” Bundle Built Especially for Counties
Counties include multiple departments that serve many different audiences, including aging services, workforce development, library systems, community healthcare, and more. For the first time, we’ve created a product bundle designed specifically to meet counties’ diverse needs. Introducing our All Courses and Curriculum Bundle.
With one annual subscription, your county gets access to our complete digitalLIFT library, including:
- All professional development courses for program managers and directors
- All Digital Navigator training courses
- Full library of 21+ device and workshop curricula
- PowerPoint decks for instructors
- Printable learner handouts for every topic
One county. One complete library. One low price.
From Fear to Confidence: R.T.’s Journey to Digital Independence
When R.T. first picked up a tablet in digitalLIFT’s Solano Connected Spanish digital literacy class, she was afraid she might break it. She had little experience with technology—but she had something even more powerful: the determination to learn.
Week by week, R.T. practiced, asked questions, and built her confidence. She learned to take screenshots, send text messages, and create and manage her own email account. One of her proudest moments was sharing her progress with her daughter, who lives in Tijuana.
Their conversations became a new way to connect and celebrate R.T.’s accomplishments.
By the end of the program, R.T. had gained far more than technical skills. She had gained confidence, independence, and new possibilities—including using online resources to improve her English and better communicate with healthcare providers.
“Digital literacy is about more than learning how to use a device—it’s about creating opportunities, strengthening connections, and building independence.”
Help us create more stories like R.T.’s. Your support can help more learners gain the digital skills and confidence they need to connect, learn, and thrive. Join us in advancing digital equity today by donating to this essential work.
Building Digital Equity Through Service Learning
For nearly two decades, digitalLIFT has worked with communities to make technology more accessible, useful, and empowering. Through our partnership with the University of San Francisco’s Leo T. McCarthy Center for Public Service and the Common Good, students put classroom learning into action by supporting real, community-identified needs.
Angeline Vuong, Director of Community-Engaged Learning and Strategic Partnerships at the McCarthy Center, shared how the partnership has impacted both students and the communities they serve. She says:
“One of the most meaningful aspects of partnering with digitalLIFT has been seeing our students apply what they learn in the classroom to meet a real community-identified need. “Digital inclusion is not simply about technology. It’s about expanding opportunities for people to access essential services, education, employment, healthcare, and civic participation.”
This partnership reflects what community-engaged learning is all about: learning from one another, building meaningful connections, and creating lasting impact together. We’re grateful to USF and the McCarthy Center for helping us advance a more digitally inclusive future.
Together, we are building a more digitally inclusive future.
Why We Advocate
As we await the revised Digital Equity Act (DEA) Competitive Grant NOFO, there is a complicated mix of relief and concern. We are grateful to see this critical funding restored, while deeply concerned about the barriers proposed changes may create for equitable service delivery, including the erosion of the racial equity requirement and the potential expectation that community practitioners verify citizenship.
It can be deflating. But advocacy asks us to move beyond frustration and toward disruption.
When the systems we call “broken” are functioning exactly as they were designed, we must challenge that design if we want different outcomes.
That means finding new ways to communicate the heart of this work to policymakers across party lines, grounding advocacy in shared community outcomes, and modernizing how we build unlikely allies. The need has never been greater. Neither has the opportunity to change the outcome.
digitalLIFT stands ready to partner with you in building the capacity needed to turn community insight into meaningful action: Partner with digitalLIFT
Each month, we’re featuring stories, insights, and successes from digital inclusion leaders across the country. Each story highlights real-world strategies, lessons learned, and innovative approaches to closing the digital divide.
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