Comcast today announced it will award a $50,000 Lift Zone Opportunity Fund grant to the Boys & Girls Clubs of Greater Holland. The grant will help the Comcast Lift Zone partner deliver a best-in-class experience for members and families at their location. The grant will also help advance digital equity for more Holland students and families.
Since October 2020, Comcast has launched five Lift Zones in West Michigan, 50 across the state of Michigan and more than1,000 across the country. Lift Zones assist families who, for a variety of reasons, are unable to connect to the Internet in their home. Lift Zones provide free, robust WiFi hotspots in safe spaces designed to help students and families get online, participate in distance learning, do homework, search for jobs, and access healthcare information and public assistance.
“We are grateful to Comcast for their generous grant to upgrade our Club’s Lift Zone,” said Craig Spoelhof, executive director of the Boys and Girls Clubs of Greater Holland. “In addition to offering more technology for youth and the community to use, we are designing a dedicated space with more functional work areas for our students to complete their digital learning. The grant will also give much needed technology support to our ‘To Graduation and Beyond’ program for teens, where the Club’s program staff walk alongside 8th-12th grade students as they make decisions about their future and complete application and scholarship requirements on-line.”
This grant announcement follows Comcast’s $180,000 digital equity investment with its nonprofit and public partners in Grand Rapids last month. Comcast awarded $30,000 to five nonprofit organizations and a total of 500 laptop computers, valued at $150,000. The computer donations and grants along with the Lift Zone Opportunity Fund grants are part of Project UP, Comcast’s $1 billion commitment to reach 50 million people over the next 10 years with the tools, resources, and skills needed to succeed in a digital world.
For the past 10 years, Comcast’s Internet Essentials program has connected more people to the internet and to the technology they need to participate and excel in an increasingly digital world. The program offers low-income families high-speed broadband Internet service for $9.95 per month, the option to purchase a heavily subsidized, low-cost Internet-ready computer and multiple options to access free digital literacy training in print, online and in person.
