Contigo Fund’s Joél Junior Morales (L) presents the laptops to Divas in Dialogue’s (L-R) Mulan Montrese Williams, Beautifull Sallings and Mariah Morris. (Photo courtesy Contigo Fund)
ORLANDO | Contigo Fund partnered with Central Florida’s local Telemundo station to give laptop computers to several nonprofits in Central Florida.
The “Access For All” campaign got 20 brand new Dell laptop computers into the hands of seven LGBTQ organizations at the beginning of the year. The campaign started with Telemundo 31 contacting Contigo Fund.
“Telemundo 31 reached out to Contigo Fund before the holidays to let us know that they not only have a donation of 20 laptops but they also wanted to donate them with 20 certificates for one full year of internet services for free,” says Andrés Acosta Ardila, community relations manager at Contigo Fund.
Contigo Fund wanted to make sure that the donation could provide the biggest impact for the community as possible.
“Several of our grantees and some of our community partners that are not grantees received the laptops with the expectations that they would be used to create services for the community,” Ardila says.
The 20 laptops were given to the LGBT+ Center Orlando, Peer Support Space, Orlando Youth Alliance, HOME Inc., Divas in Dialogue, R.I.S.E Initiative and Hope CommUnity Center. The organizations and number of laptops each one received was determined based on need.
“We looked at where these laptops could do the most good,” Ardila says. “We funded the LGBTQ immigration coordinator with Hope CommUnity Center because that individual does not have their own laptop so when they go out and do outreach with clients they often have to use their phone.”
“Access For All” was launched to help combat the “digital divide” within Central Florida’s LGBTQ communities of color. The digital divide refers to the growing gap in access to technology between privileged communities and underserved and under-resourced communities. A divide, Ardila says, that has been made even more apparent as communities try to get back to work after the COVID-19 pandemic left many without jobs.
“A good example of that is Divas in Dialogue,” he says. “Mulan [Montrese Williams, founder of Divas in Dialogue] does a lot of outreach and sometimes the girls have to come to her house just to use her internet because you can’t apply for a job without having access to the internet. So we tell these communities you need to be employed and you need to move up in the world, you need to pull yourself by your bootstraps but they don’t have the access to even do the basics like applying for a job online.”
Divas in Dialogue, a “sisterhood of trans women of color empowering, building and strengthening each other” that is “ensuring that we all have a seat at the table,” received three of the laptops — one to be used by a staff member and the other two to be used to create a learning library so community members will have computer access when needed.
Contigo Fund is a nonprofit philanthropic group born as a result of the Pulse tragedy. They fund community organizations working to heal, educate and empower LGBTQ and Latinx individuals, immigrants and people of color.
For more information on their mission, visit ContigoFund.org.
