Digital connections for low-income Latinos

*This is work that still needs to be done – bridging the digital divide, one family at a time. VL

By Joe Rodriguez, San Jose Mercury News

SUNNYVALE — Mario Garcia came to Damaris Antonio’s tiny apartment bearing gifts most families in Silicon Valley have come to take for granted: a personal computer, Internet service and a secret password to a better life.

“This is going to open up the world for you,” said Garcia, a tall and burly technician with the Chicana/Latina Foundation in Burlingame. Antonio, a Mexican immigrant and mother of two young children, didn’t quite understand him. She responded with a puzzled smile. “I really don’t know anything about computers, but they tell me it’s important to have one,” she said. “There was just no way we could afford it.”

That importance began to sink in when her two kids, 7-year-old Ariatna and 4-year-old Adrian Jr., came home from school. When they saw their mother sitting at the kitchen table with the laptop Garcia had delivered, they jumped on her lap and squealed in delight. Then they fiddled with an online educational dinosaur game.

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