Founded in 1923, Evergreen Goodwill of Northwest Washington is a nonprofit organization serving five counties in northern Washington state – surrounding the Seattle area. Its mission is to make educational and career opportunities accessible to the communities it supports, so that each person may experience rewarding employment, financial security, and educational achievement.
Digital Equity Bus (D.E.B.) Initiative
Looking for a creative way to serve community members in more rural areas of the region, in early 2022 Evergreen Goodwill partnered with Kajeet to launch a digital equity initiative. They outfitted a ‘Digital Equity Bus’ (affectionately referred to as ‘D.E.B.’), built by Black & Veatch, with Kajeet SmartBus™ WiFi, a router-based solution enabling individuals on or around the bus to connect to secure, high-speed Internet simultaneously. Community members have been able to attend mobile workshops held inside the bus classroom, in which educators teach workforce development, job training skills, and English language lessons. These buses are parked in strategic locations throughout the region to serve the areas of highest need, even partnering with a neighboring Native Nation, Lummi Nation, to better serve that community.
With the help of the multi-carrier solution from Kajeet, the D.E.B. initiative has been able to proceed without Internet connectivity issues. Content filters keep program participants safe and on-task while online. And especially valuable to the Evergreen Goodwill IT team has been the Kajeet Sentinel administrator platform, enabling data and device visibility and management across the program.
Building off the success of supporting the community through D.E.B., Evergreen Goodwill is outfitting a second Digital Equity Bus to expand its reach throughout the region.
“Partnering with Kajeet has been very successful. With the help of their great support and reliable connectivity, we have been able to touch many lives through this program.” – Jessica Hilburn, Digital Equity Manager
Click here to download this Success Story as a PDF
Goodwill Connect Program
Also in 2022, Evergreen Goodwill teamed up with the four other Goodwill agencies serving the state of Washington to offer a program with the goal of connecting individuals with job training and computer skills. Through this program, job seekers in the community were encouraged to reach out to their local Goodwill to receive a Chromebook, a Kajeet WiFi hotspot, and to be enrolled in Goodwill classes where they would have the opportunity to hone their computer skills and search Goodwill’s database for job postings. Over 3,000 community members were served over the course of this 18-month initiative.
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