Pat Millen has been working around the clock to get computers to as many Charlotte-Mecklenburg families as he can before school resumes next month.
Though fully-remote learning makes Millen's mission more important than ever, his push to close the digital divide began years ago.
Millen founded the Cornelius-based company E2D in 2013, after his then 12-year-old daughter came home from school upset that not every classmate had access to computers for at-home assignments. He decided to get a needs assessment from one of the schools and identified 54 families that needed a computer.
"She wanted to talk about how unfair it was that not all kids in her class could access tech the way she could," he said. "The digital divide is everywhere, and I wanted to come up with a more sustainable solution locally, so I began asking local companies to donate old computers that could be refurbished."
Those 54 families received computers in August 2013, and since then E2D has donated about 12,500 refurbished computers to families throughout the Charlotte-Mecklenburg School District.
As Covid-19 forced school closures and remote learning became the only option, Millen said the digital divide became even clearer. He knew he needed to find a way to get computers in as many CMS students' households as possible.
He was approached about forming a partnership with Crown Castle, a real estate investment trust and the country's largest provider of shared communications infrastructure. The company gave E2D $25,000 to purchase hardware supplies like hard drives, power cords and batteries, all things Millen said he often needs to complete a computer.
"We get in computers from some sources that are missing things... and we needed a budget we can apply to buying hardware supplies to complete these computers," he said. "It was really serendipitous, and it's resulted in more than 500 computers that we’ve made viable."
But computer donations aren't the only way E2D is helping the county's low income families. Millen said the company partnered with four CMS high schools - West Charlotte, South Mecklenburg, Olympic and Garinger - to create on-campus labs where about 150 students are hired, trained and paid to refurbish the computers.
Students in the Cornelius area are also employed at E2D's headquarters.
"We're providing a workforce opportunity for students and helping families who have never felt a need for tech as much as they have right now," he said.
Millen said the students are hired at $10 per hour and work three days per week for about three hours per day. After completing a set number of hours, pay is bumped up to $15 per hour.
Though the school labs were shut down because of the pandemic, E2D was able to bring students from West Charlotte and Garinger back to work, thanks to a temporary lab that opened at AvidXChange.
"We’re just cranking and there’s no school to contend with so they’re able to just work," Millen said. "It’s super meaningful. The kids who work up here in Cornelius, they’re mostly working so they can go get their cars washed. In West Charlotte, they're working to help mom pay the bills."
Millen said with enough computers he believes they could close the digital divide for families in Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools in about two years, a feat that he said would take about 10,000 computers.
"E2D needs donated laptops. The easiest thing in the world is to go talk to someone in your IT department, and if you're worried about data security, pull out the brains, and give us the rest of the computer," he said. "If the reason you can’t give us a computer is because someone wrote a policy 15 years saying you can't give away old computers, it might be time to go revisit that policy."
