Digital Inclusion: A challenge greater than any one company

About the event

12 Oct 2021

During Digital Inclusion Week, Justin van Fleet, GBC-Education Executive Director, joined a panel discussion organized by HP on accelerating digital equity in education, healthcare and economic opportunities.

The event was co-hosted with the National Digital Inclusion Alliance (NDIA) and moderated by Morgan DeBaun, founder and CEO at Blavity, alongside Autumn Glover of Ohio Health and Angela Siefer of the National Digital Inclusion Alliance. The discussion focused on how each organization can help build local ecosystems to support digital equity with concrete solutions.

In his introductory remarks, Harvey Anderson, Chief Legal Officer and Corporate Secretary at HP, stressed that the pandemic did not cause the digital divide, nor will it go away as the world begins to recover. According to Anderson, access to resources, technology, quality content and digital literacy are a fundamental human right. “It is one of the most defining issues of our time and will only continue to worsen unless we take bold actions today”.

Justin van Fleet highlighted that the issue of digital equity and digital inclusion is in fact very local and becomes a household issue when two-thirds of children around the world have no access to the internet or broadband. He also highlighted that not one company, NGO, or government organization can solve the issue in isolation. It requires everybody to come together and look at what they can contribute to solve each piece of the larger puzzle.