Across the Great Divide

Plugged In's community focus has attracted the support of some of Silicon Valley's leading companies: More than three-fourths of its approximately $500,000 annual budget comes from such companies as Sun Microsystems, Cisco Systems, Hewlett-Packard, and Oracle. Avram Miller, former vice president of business development at Intel, chairs Plugged In's board.

Plugged In operates on the premise that, to be an effective tool for change, information technology has to be woven into the fabric of a community -- so much so that it becomes just another part of daily life. Having your nails done? Drop in to check your email when you're finished. Completed the drug-rehab program and looking for a job? Come by, and surf the Net for opportunities. Plugged In makes technology accessible -- but even more important, it makes technology relevant to the lives of people who may never have seen a computer keyboard.

East Palo Alto is a perfect place to put those principles to the test. By Plugged In's reckoning, fewer than 20% of East Palo Alto families own computers. More than 17% of the population live in poverty, and only 14% have four-year-college degrees.

"The value proposition of information technology has not been made for low-income people," says Decrem, who recently stepped down as Plugged In's coexecutive director and now serves on the board of directors. "They understand why it's important to have a car. Because if they don't have a car, they have to take a bus, and if they miss the bus, then they have to wait a long time. People get that. But it's much harder for them to see the tangible benefits of computer technology in their lives. Our challenge is to build a market here for these technologies."

That challenge dictates Plugged In's low-key approach to high-tech exposure. Walk in the front door and there's a photocopy machine, a wire stand holding copies of a free local newspaper, and a part-time bilingual staff person who's ready to sell a bus pass -- or to help customers use the computers that fill the back of the room.

Open 12 hours a day during the week and 3 hours a day on weekends, the center draws about 300 clients a week. Part cyber-cafe, part job-resource center (one nook of the room is devoted to books and software on job hunting), part computer classroom, and part neighborhood hangout, Plugged In projects an intentionally laid-back atmosphere. After all, how the place feels is critical to how the place works. And the place works exactly the way Decrem hoped it would: People from the community have gradually made it their own. On a typical day and evening, the center is used constantly: Its steady flow of walk-in customers from the community may include a high-school girl using a computer to type an essay for English class; an alternative candidate for mayor copying flyers for his campaign; teenage boys dropping in for a game of chess; two girls using computers to make party invitations; and a man searching for job information on the Net.

Elsa Aguilera, 19, is a typical Plugged In user. Like many customers, she accidentally discovered the center. Although she'd learned to use computers in high school, she didn't have one at home. Now she's a Plugged In regular, surfing the Web for information on subjects that interest her, such as art galleries, and using email to stay in touch with friends and relatives in Mexico. "You can stay online as long as you want," she says, sitting in front of a computer with her three-year-old niece on her lap. "This center is important, because people need information and they don't know how to get it. With access to computers, it's easier."

But Plugged In doesn't just weave technology into the lives of local residents -- it also forges partnerships with other community groups. Under a project funded by the California Wellness Foundation, for example, Plugged In has worked with Free At Last, the drug-rehab program across the street, to increase awareness about HIV and hepatitis C -- diseases that affect a large percentage of East Palo Alto's residents.

That project has produced a special Web site that features stories of residents battling these diseases and a Web yellow pages of other related sites, researched and compiled by Plugged In staff and tailored to the community's needs. What's more, all of Plugged In's computers have screen savers that advertise the new Web site.

One of Plugged In's proudest boasts: The center's staff got the program up and running in only a few months. "Because we're community based, we can respond very quickly," says Magda Adriana Escobar, 29, Plugged In's executive director. "That's the benefit of working with an organization like ours, instead of distributing technology through public schools and libraries, where decisions have to go through a bureaucratic structure. Here, we can focus on people and their needs. We are the social-change equivalent of the garage at Hewlett-Packard."