Transitions Opens Two On-Site Technology Centers Dedicated to Low-Income and Homeless Women and Children

SPOKANE, Wash. — Transitions Learning & Technology Center for low-income, homeless and disenfranchised women and children is opening in two of three planned locations with the support of a $100, 500 grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s Community Access to Technology (CAT) program. Transitions sponsors the three nonprofit programs in Spokane dedicated to assisting low-income women and children stabilize and gain the skills they need to become self-sufficient.  

“We see technology as a learning and empowerment tool that can help women and their children break the cycle of poverty and dependence,” says Natalie Kenney, director of the Transitional Living Center. “Computer training and educational programs are now integrated into a set of life skills compatible with our mission at Transitions.”

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s CAT program seeks to help organizations and communities in Washington State utilize digital technologies to make changes to the lives of individuals and their communities.

The Transitions Learning & Technology center will feature 21 computer stations and be headquartered at the Transitional Living Center, where up to 45 formerly homeless women and children reside for up to two years and receive services including specialized day care and after school programs on site.  The Center’s director will coordinate the program which will teach internet and basic computer and word processing skills and develop additional offerings. Seven computers with access to the Internet and a teaching computer station with a LCD projector will be located at TLC. The Center will also provide services to women residing at Eleanor Chase, a 55 bed facility operated by Second Chance, a nonprofit organization committed to helping women transition back into the community after incarceration.

Concurrently, a satellite consisting of four computers is being activated at Miryam’s House, a second program of Transitions that provides transitional housing and case management support for women in crisis as they recover from displacement, abuse and the results of poverty. At Miryam’s House nine residents live in a homelike environment for up to a year while preparing for independent living.  A third site with ten computers is planned during the second year of the grant at the Women’s Drop-In Center, an outreach day program for women in transition located in downtown Spokane.

According to Pam Aden, Director of Eleanor Chase House, residents will be transported to the facility at TLC on a scheduled basis through a planned collaboration, “Like the residents at TLC and Miryam’s House, they are also preparing to re-enter the work force and need computer skills,” stated Aden. Transitions estimates that the Center will serve between 100-150 women and 20-30 children in the first year at the two sites with a significant expansion in the second year when the Women’s Drop-In Center satellite is opened.  The center will also be working with Jubilee House, a Seattle transitional residence for women, which operates a similar technology center now in the second year of operation, to develop statistics relating to needs and program effectiveness for this population.      

Funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation will help support the staffing and technology-related costs of the Center for the first two years.

On the Internet:
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, www.gatesfoundation.org
Transitions Learning & Technology Center, www.help4women.com