Community Anchor Institutions: The Real Engines of Digital Equity

I served with the statewide digital equity initiative in Maryland, which dropped me straight into the everyday realities of the digital divide. Through the cooperative extension system, I had the opportunity to closely observe how schools, libraries, and nonprofits—which we call community-anchor institutions—collaborate to build community capacity. CAIs aren’t just "nice to have." They are the places people trust, the places people actually show up, and often the only places where digital life becomes something navigable. Two statewide interview studies our team conducted made that clear. Our first study captured conversations with 151 residents navigating e-government systems daily. Their struggles were familiar: clumsy websites, confusing instructions, inaccessible portals, and a deep fear of making mistakes online. Our second study focused on Spanish-speaking English-language learners—a group often expected to keep up with growing digital demands without enough resources or support in their preferred language. The strongest through-line, again, was trust. Taken together, these two studies reveal something crucial: digital equity doesn't scale through technology alone—it scales through relationships. And those relationships live inside local CAIs.

Dr. Yeweon Kim is a postdoctoral researcher at the Center for Trustworthy AI at Seoul National University and a Benton Opportunity Fund Fellow. Her research explores the societal impacts of information and communication technologies at individual and community levels, with a focus on digital empowerment, equity, and ethics.