Join the New Learning Community: NH Voices for Digital Equity
MERLOT has generously created an online learning community toolset for use by those committed to fostering digital equity in support of educational and economic inclusion. Join here!
Summit Outcomes
- State leaders and policy makers in financial and economic inclusion, banking, digital equity, education, workforce and community development, and philanthropy met to consider why and how best to support integrated approaches to financial, economic, educational and digital inclusion in high poverty communities.
- Participants from several diverse NH communities agreed to form grassroots leadership teams in low and moderate income (LMI) communities from across these sectors to begin framing local strategies for integrated financial, economic and digital inclusion.
- Participants learned about leading resource providers in financial, economic and digital inclusion available to support state and local efforts in NH and nationwide.
- Determined next steps to sustain a statewide support network for LMI teams undertaking integrated inclusion, including the following:
- Organize intensive effort to develop a state plan to foster CRA investment in broadband infrastructure in NH’s underserved communities (in collaboration, we hope, with Jeanne Milliken Bonds at the Richmond Fed, the interagency group on broadband, SHLB and other key partners.
- Develop a Guide to CRA Partnership Development for Banking, Educational and Municipal Leaders. Include scenarios and examples – e.g., for school system leaders, for leaders of postsecondary institutions, for municipal leaders.
- Support intensive pilot sites in NH for digital equity and economic inclusion –early candidates are the North Country, Farmington, and Manchester.
- Continue updating NCDE’s free Guide to CRA Grantmaking for Digital Equity and Economic Inclusion.
- Update the NCDE Joint Statement and submit to OCC (and to the two other federal CRA compliance agencies – FDIC and Federal Reserve – when they too issue their calls for public comment on modernizing CRA regulations and guidelines):
- Urge that bank support for Title I Schoolwide schools be eligible for CRA credit, even if their census tract is not itself an LMI area.
- Urge that “pockets” of poverty within an otherwise non-CRA-eligible census tract be eligible for CRA support.
- Develop an expanded, continually updated section on NCDE’s website on key resources and how to access them for digital, educational and economic inclusion.
- Provide and record a free webinar on how NH digital equity summit participants – and other NH stakeholders as we grow a more inclusive, wider conversation – on how to use the MERLOT Voices toolset to enable online resource seeking and sharing.
- Seek leadership/guidance from participants in NH’s Diversity & Inclusion community to ensure underrepresented stakeholders/intended beneficiaries in the state’s LMI communities have agency, voice and leadership in local digital and economic inclusion efforts.
- Identify NH public housing authorities interested in seeking to become a HUD ConnectHome site in the next round.
- Next annual NH summit – showcase progress since today’s event made in pilot sites, regarding CRA broadband investment, more digital equity and economic inclusion-related resources available since today’s highlights, impacts achieved so far & plan next steps from there.
Summit Audiences
- State association leaders and policy makers from banking, business, education, philanthropy, workforce and community development, who seek to foster an inclusive high-skill, high-wage economy.
- Local leaders in low- and moderate-income (LMI) communities from banking, business, education, philanthropy, workforce and community development, who seek to (a) eliminate the digital divide as a barrier to financial literacy, economic inclusion and educational opportunity.
- Resource providers who stand ready to assist state and local leaders to narrow the digital divide and foster more robust pathways to living wage careers in STEM and other fields.