Way Finders has received a $285,000 grant to further digital equity and community advocacy work that will continue digital equity programs in Springfield and now in Holyoke.
Received from the Point32 Foundation, the parent company of the Harvard Pilgrim Health Care and Tufts Health Plan, the grant will cover the next three years of digital equity, housing justice and other community programming in the two cities.
The digital equity programs funded with this grant helps patient instructors guide people through their first digital experiences with the goal of creating confident participants in the digital life of their communities. Way Finders Community Building and Engagement Director Bea Dewberry told Reminder Publishing many of the digital skills adults learn through this program are things many younger people just take for granted.
“This grant supports whatever our Springfield and Holyoke residents identify as an area of inequity,” said Dewberry. “The older adults we work with have chosen to focus on digital equity, housing justice and quality of life in their communities.”
Regarding digital equity, Dewberry added, “This group is not job hunting. They need to access things like telehealth, to be able to engage in civic life, to go to the city website and find out when trash day is or complete a survey. Things that those of us who are digitally savvy take for granted.”
According to Dewberry, the origins of this programming date back several years when “Flexing your civic muscle” started. The origin of that came from wanting to build the capacity of older adults and community leaders, and get them empowered with the changing world.
Since then they have seen many adults take part in these types of programming, and have become better advocates for themselves and attained a better understanding of the digital divide so many older adults run into.
Dewberry said while some program participants are content to learn these new skills, others discover they have a passion to go further and become resident advocates. Through the Way Finders Resident Leadership Program, participants learn what it means to be a community leader. The program prepares resident learners to grow into resident advocates with the skills, capacity and support to make their community a safe, welcoming place to live.
“Our resident advocates have identified and accomplished significant goals, like a streetlight campaign in Springfield. They identified places where the lights were out, which encourages crime. They started a campaign to pressure the mayor and city councilors. They reported outages. They showed Eversource was not being responsive. It brought a lot of attention to the issue and they got streetlights back on in their neighborhood,” Dewberry explained.
Helping bridge these gaps has helped older adults be better equipped to tackle new job opportunities, access telehealth appointments and information, and become better advocates for themselves overall in certain areas of the changing world we live in.
With the expansion into Holyoke, Dewberry added Way Finders will be able to provide most of its programming in both English and Spanish. To learn more, visit WayFinders.org and click the “In the Community” link.
“It’s just really exciting to see people flourish where they live and then also to see them work to help where they live flourish,” Dewberry said of the programming’s impact on adults.
