The Broadband Office provides resident advocacy and program development to address our community's barrier's to digital access. 

Providing leadership in the pursuit of digital equity, the Office collaborates with community partners to identify the challenges community members face in participating in our digital world, to develop programs to provide solutions for these challenges, and to help build capacity in our community to be more digitally inclusive. 

Engaging Our Digital Community

None of this work has been prepared by this office alone. Internal and external stakeholders, community members, and local, regional, and national partners have contributed to this work. The Office has focused on increasing the capacity of partners to engage in digital inclusion work, while developing programs that benefit all community members.

Coalition: The focus of much of the office's work has been to develop a coalition of community partners to develop a digital equity plan for the area, and to lay the groundwork for programs and initiatives that will directly address barriers to digital access. The coalition includes representatives from the City of Charlottesville, County of Albemarle, University of Virginia, along with the Jefferson Area Board for Aging, Jefferson Madison Regional Library, Blue Ridge Health District, Piedmont Virginia Community College, Piedmont Housing Alliance, Center for Civic Innovation and more. 

Engagement: Development of a digital equity plan began with a community engagement involving focus groups with our coalition partner communities. These focus groups were conducted by a cohort of University of Virginia planning students during the Spring of 2023. The report has guided the work of the coalition and can be read here.

Digital navigators: One factor that arose during the focus groups was the consistency of fear as a factor in individual decisions regarding broadband access and use. Addressing those fears requires an understanding of an individual's concerns and circumstances; digital navigators provide in-person basic digital skills training, device troubleshooting and guidance, and referral to digital inclusion resources. A pilot program is expected to begin December, 2023.