>> 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50.

Okay we are all good with timecode.

♪ [Music playing] ♪ >> Cleo Parker Robinson Dance is a 52 year institution for community.

Not only in dance, but the arts, healing, and instruction.

And that instruction is wide based.

Especially now that we are in the field of technology.

♪ [Music playing] ♪ I am very proud of it.

They do not even know it but I talk about them all the time.

As the technical director for Cleo Parker Robinson Dance I am in charge of all things technical, a lighting designer will bring me a plot and it is up to me to figure out the math of the lights.

I have to figure out the programming of the board, video, the science of editing all the different music needed for production.

We work together to make sure that whatever production is brought forward by Cleo, we are able to technically bring it to life.

>> We are blessed.

>> Just tying it all together.

♪ [Music playing] ♪ >> What is S.T.R.E.A.M.?

>> S.T.R.E.A.M.

that is my baby.

S.T.R.E.A.M is science technology robotics engineering arts and media.

It is a technical theater, stem-based program where young scholars learn not just the basics of lighting, audio, video, but outside of the box thinking, of how to take robotics, coding, data science, kinetics, and create in the realm of productions.

>> Thank you so much.

>> When I look on the stage I see decades and decades of history, I see opportunity for the future, I see the opportunity for us to narrow the gap in that digital divide.

♪ [Music playing] ♪ >> For several decades we've had this term the digital divide and it's looked at the fact that there are communities in this country that have not had access to the Internet.

Over time that's also meant not having access to devices and not having digital skills training and all those other things.

So there's been this digital divide that has evolved over time, and gotten worse in many respects so digital equity is about closing that divide.

>> I don't believe communities understand when we say digital equity.

I don't think they understand that we are really behind.

When you wake up every day and you have access to bandwidth and devices, you do not understand the complexities of digital equity for everyone.

There are many young scholars who come to me and I explain to them the programming and the opportunities that they have and they go wow, that's great.

So I will learn how to use Internet-based devices to do professional lighting, professional audio, robotics, and I told them yeah.

If you follow these instructions.

That's when I find out that they do not have the access needed or the devices needed.

Helping to close the digital divide truly is something I think about for the American people and for Coloradoans and as we have all experienced the pandemic, access to the Internet is an absolutely vital part of participating in modern society.

It's not okay to have people having to go to McDonald's and sit in the parking lot and do their homework.

It's not okay to deny people access to telemedicine.

It's not okay to deny people access to economic opportunities.

That's what's been happening.

The digital divide as Commissioner [indiscernible] said, it's not new but it's time that we close it.

This is a critical imperative for all of us.

It is a core civil rights issue, how we enable access to affordable accessible broadband.

We still have 48 million low income Americans who remain disconnected from the Internet.

Disproportionately so, communities of color remain the households that are disconnected.

The older generation especially in black and communities of color, it's fear.

Fear of somebody will get my identity, someone will take all my information and use it against me.

So these fears combined with instruction that's not there, the gap is getting bigger and bigger and bigger.

>> My name is Roy Barnett Junior.

I am the Dean of Technology here as well as a media arts teacher.

So right now we're working on music production.

>> Can I do it on my computer?

>> When you think about American culture for example, it was created by young black and brown students.

Kids.

And all that I'm doing is simply showing them the tools.

And you listen to the things and what they do it's already within them so giving them the access of being able to use those tools.

It's recording.

>> Hi my name is Dianni.

>> Being the Dean of Technology, during Covid it was such a traumatic experience for students.

And I am in no way saying that what I went through compared to what some of the families went through, but literally I could have 10 students that needed hotspot for example to be able to access the Internet.

To be able to go to school and then I would have 3.

And I would have to decide who gets to school and who does not get to go to school?

As you see just how things like that should be a given, you should not have kids sitting outside of libraries or Taco Bells and restaurants trying to access the Wi-Fi.

And sometimes those companies come off for those people and then you realize that it is a utility, it's called velocity sensitivity, so like the harder you hit it, the louder it plays.

I am originally from Tulsa Oklahoma, North Tulsa Oklahoma it's very segregated, so I grew up in an environment somewhat similar to here.

And as you learn more and more about the community you start to understand the community better and you start to understand why the community distrusts education and you see how the past really really devastated them because school is a fundamental aspect of the community.

So an octave listen, do you hear this?

Does it sound different?

I think that it's so easy to go down the wrong path and I don't want to ever sound like it's an automatic for the students and that's one of the things that I think is so important about the story.

Allowing them to again take control of their story, because like a teller, no one is going to know who you are until you tell them.

And so they have to tell people who they are.

You think about the creators and you think about who is creative culture, and I refuse to believe that these students aren't geniuses.

I refuse to believe that they aren't actors and musicians like engineers, simply having access to certain things.

>> I've always had an interest in computers, ever since I was a little kid.

Growing up I was the little family computer technician, if there was something going on with grandma's computer, 7 year old Zane was who had to fix it.

♪ [Music playing] ♪ I am Zane McCune.

I'm 18 years old and I am a computer technician at PCs for People.

Computer hardware does not age as badly as a lot of people think it does, it can stay operational years after it was made.

Can you say 128 solid-state?

Is that right?

[indiscernible] >> What we do here is we take that functional hardware, it's old but still functional and we restore it back and we put new batteries in it, make sure the RAM is good, put white drives in it.

And then we sell it to lower income families in order to get them access to computers and the Internet at affordable pricing.

>> How many computers do you think are in this building?

>> So computers in this building there's probably a few thousand as far as laptops go.

Desktops, probably in the thousands as well.

>> It's going to be in the tens of thousands honestly.

♪ [Music playing] ♪ >> I learned a great deal of my computer knowledge just by watching YouTube videos.

I used the Internet as a learning resource, that is my preferred way of doing it.

I do my best to not sit there scrolling through Instagram and not by just scrolling through TikTok.

I want to learn more about computers and more about what they can do and how to use them.

Having access to the Internet has really allowed me to advance myself in positive ways and I would not be here if it was not for the fact that I know how to use the Internet, and so I think that everyone should at least be awarded the opportunity to do that.

>> I moved to Colorado at the beginning of seventh grade and at that point I did not have home Wi-Fi.

Whenever I needed to do some serious work on the Internet, I had to spend hours a day in the public library near where I live.

That was how I got my work done.

I gained full access to the Internet when I was in my sophomore year of high school.

After I got my Internet is really when my foray into learning about computers really kicked off.

I really do just crave information.

♪ [Music playing] ♪ >> I love it here.

Yeah, it's a very calm environment, very relaxed.

I feel like it's really right up my alley.

Replacing a battery in a laptop is really easy and I don't think a lot of people understand that, they just want to buy the new thing because it's the new thing.

And that generates a lot of waste, we call it e-waste, PCs for People our mission really is to try to cut back on that, and to try and take these used components that are still more than functional and get them to people who maybe cannot spend 500 or 800 or 1200 or $3000 on a laptop.

Some older stuff is perfectly serviceable and will do the job just fine for what 90% of people need a laptop for, then why not give it to them?

Why not make it as affordable as possible and get people the hardware that they need to unlock the opportunities that come along with it?

♪ [Music playing] ♪ >> Occasionally one of our customers will need some technical assistance and our customer service team will come get me.

We're good at translating computer problems, and computer solutions.

I want to help people know how to solve their own problems.

So I really do my best to explain the problem and explain how I can get the solution.

All right, what do you want to name the computer?

>> It's Dan.

>> Nice to meet you Dan, I am Zane.

>> Thanks for helping me out here.

>> Yeah you're welcome.

♪ [Music playing] ♪ >> And this thing is set up and good to go.

>> Okay.

>> Sure we can be like oh yeah let's check this thing in for repair and give it back to them in a couple of days and then be like okay here's your computer it's good now.

Yeah the computer is well now but they did not learn anything.

Working here I know that what I'm doing is helping people, I am contributing and I know that I am actively playing a part in making other people's days and lives a little bit better.

Even though I am but one employee at a national company, I still am important, I still am cranking out I would say maybe 100 computers a week.

Becoming a wealth of knowledge when it comes to using computers and using the Internet, keeping everything safe and just doing that at an extremely high level, and profiting from it, that is what I would consider success for me.

Right now, I am taking a cybersecurity class from CU Boulder.

Cybersecurity seems like a great computer pathway and simply an interesting thing to learn that's going to stimulate my brain and make me happy.

To me, I hope to not stagnate and never stagnate and I hope to just find a taller hill.

Even when I'm an old man I still want to be trying to do more, I want to still be expanding whatever I'm capable of.

♪ [Music playing] ♪ >> The Denver Youth Empowerment Center the objective is to be a safe zone, where individuals can come here and be able to work on their homework, work on other different trainings for other jobs, and be able to obtain jobs as well as be able to have healing and entrepreneurial opportunities as well.

>> I think it's very important for the community because there are so many things going on in the world and I don't think that parents are super aware of the things that are going on in the street, and literally just from your kid getting on the bus to go to the gym or to go to the library to study, there are so many things that can happen and so many uncertainties and so I think places like this where kids can go to a place with tutoring opportunities and exercise opportunities and so many things you can learn and do in a safe environment is super important.

>> So the Internet at my house sucks really bad.

I never use my home Internet because it's like better without.

>> Yes it's frustrating because how many times you have to do it over and over and like after you restart your stuff and everything, and it still does not work, that gets more frustrating.

>> If they have their basic needs met, it creates an umbrella of a safety net.

Knowing that I do not have to just survive anymore, I can start striving within the world.

And then the psychological aspect of it, you know it brings ease where we are not in a fright flight or freeze and we are not in survival anymore, we can start striving that creates hope and motivation and determination to allow us to continue moving forward and to be able to sustain the efforts.

And that's what they really really provides and allows us to help provide for the community and each individual family basis in the community basis.

>> I think it means a lot of things, like we live in such a world of opportunity, so there are so many ways that you could be connected or disconnected.

So I think connectivity to me would mean just feeling like I'm open to opportunity.

Like I have so many outlets and that sort of thing.

>> Connectivity is essential.

[indiscernible] >> "It has to be very big with many ingredients."

♪ [Music playing] ♪ >> My name is [indiscernible].

I am from Columbia.

I married with Felipe.

and he is studying his PhD at the Colorado School of Mines in Denver.

And we have a daughter, she is Maria [indiscernible] and she's 6 1/2 years old.

We arrived here in 2018 at the end of the year, and it was a hard transition because we have all of our things in Columbia.

My job, Felipe's job too, Maria [indiscernible] was starting preschool.

And our family, our own space.

But we have a big opportunity for Felipe continuing his studies.

And we decided to move without anything.

It was in winter.

"The craziness that is here outside."

We felt happy to see Felipe because he moved in three months earlier than us.

We arrived and got this one-bedroom apartment.

>> I remember we received a box with the modem and power cord.

It started to work, the Internet was really really easy and in our country, it's something takes three or five days to get anything.

♪ [Music playing] ♪ >> I started English classes in January and Maria started her class at preschool in January too.

And he went in January and February and some days in March.

COVID started was crazy for everybody.

And of course for us.

Maria stopped going to school, I stopped going to my English lessons.

And suddenly Felipe was in front of a screen, I was the same, Maria [indiscernible] was trying to be in her class.

She was three years old.

And she did not know anything about English.

I am missing my family of course, my hometown is called Tamesis.

It's a small town, there are coffee growers and this is the reason why I love coffee.

♪ [Music playing] ♪ I have my mom in Colombia, my brother, and Felipe's family.

And it was the hardest part at the beginning.

♪ [Music playing] ♪ >> The Internet allowed us to stay connected when we need or want, it is a very good tool to stay in touch with people that we are missing.

We have everything connected at home, we have Alexa who plays the radio.

In Colombian... she plays Colombian stations on our phones, the watch is connected to it because I exercise and I have my routines and also when we bike, we have some apps to monitor our performance.

The Internet allowed us to stay connected with our family.

And our friends and our professional life too.

Felipe can study and take his classes doing his research and in that case I can be more in activities to stay connected in Columbia.

And also to learn from the Internet, how to prepare our favorite recipes, or Maria [indiscernible] improving her pronunciation through some apps or some videos or listening to music.

They are helping even to improve my pronunciation or my level of English.

To feel that I can work or stay connected, I don't feel so far from my family and don't feel concerned to stay far from home.

This is kind of a big surprise for me.

♪ [Music playing] ♪ >> We have a good quality of time to share and to learn as a family, and we feel pretty lucky for that opportunity.

♪ [Music playing] ♪ >> I think about something that the great iconic civil rights figure representative John Lewis said about the Internet, he said that Internet access is a civil rights issue of the 21st century.

It's important to achieve digital equity and to close the digital divide, as a fairness matter and civil rights issue, but also an economic issue because in terms of the competitiveness of the US workers, US students, and US relative to the world, our GDP, it's an economic issue as well.

>> One of the worst things I hear is this idea of saving these kids, they don't need saving, they just need society to not be racist that's all they need.

They are amazing, and so like they don't need me, I'm just showing them what's already inside of them.

>> Digital equity is access, devices, instruction, and the ability to erase fear of using all the above.

♪ [Music playing] ♪