California foster children experience the benefits from greater access to technology after nonprofit iFoster leverages a $300,000 grant aimed at serving challenged families, according to an announcement last week by the California Emerging Technology Fund (CEFT). The Fund says it is allotting the three-year grant to improve services and increase access to low-cost computers and high-speed Internet among families in the California foster care community.
The grant is designed to help iFoster leverage other funding and in-kind sources to provide 75,000 low-cost computing devices and 4,500 affordable broadband connections. Under this program, families in the foster, adoptive and kinship systems, as well as students who are eligible for free and reduced lunch, can receive broadband Internet service for $9.95 to $20 per month and purchase laptop and desktop computers from $120 to $250.
"Broadband is a transforming technology that is essential to help foster youth build better lives," said CETF President and Chief Executive Officer Sunne Wright McPeak in a press release. "The grant is meant to support iFoster in finding innovative ways to help children in foster care, emancipated youth and their families connect online with each other, and to public- and private-sector services."
The grant enables iFoster to work with community partners in developing customized local solutions to address barriers to academic success for vulnerable children in seven California counties. iFoster will firstly focus on Los Angeles, Santa Clara and Contra Costa counties.
"We believe that technology is an equalizing force in society, but tragically our most vulnerable children and youth, those in foster care, do not have access to computers or the Internet,’’ iFoster Executive Director Serita Cox said in a press release.
