How a librarian’s trip to the car park planted the seed for a project to help people who can’t afford wifi.
(31 Oct 2021) According to the 2021 Australian Digital Inclusion Index, 92% of Australians earning less than $52,000 a year would have to pay more than 5% of their household income to access a quality, reliable internet connectionand 14% would need to pay more than 10%.
In the midst of lockdown, Yarra Plenty Regional Library allocated $50,000 for a pilot program to give wifi dongles with 60GB per month of data to 100 families for a year. Drawing lessons from similar schemes in the United States and Europe, the library partnered with a not-for-profit support service, Whittlesea Community Connections, to help identify families in need, and Vodafone, who supplied a suitable product.
More can be found from the original news story here.
