Digital Equity as Foundation: How the Women's Bean Project Illustrates the Interconnected Nature of Social Justice Work

Hotspot is a series of articles drawn from interviews with people across the digital equity and inclusion ecosystem. In this issue, Cassie Bair, our VP of Broadband Services sat down with Rachel Morgenroth, Director of Program Operations at the Women’s Bean Project to discuss the role digital equity plays in helping women create lasting change in their lives by establishing steppingstones to self-sufficiency.

Social Justice Can’t Happen in Silos

Digital equity work is a fundamental foundation in achieving social justice. Our Hotspot conversation with Rachel Morgenroth, Director of Program Operations at the Women’s Bean Project, in Denver, CO., clearly illustrated how the women they serve fall within what are often viewed as disparate areas of social equity — including employment, childcare, and housing.

A NTEN Digital Inclusion Fellow, Morgenroth is currently developing a curriculum to expand Women’s Bean Project’s digital literacy, access, and affordable technology programs as part of the 2025 Digital Inclusion Fellowship cohort.

Today, you can’t meaningfully address employment barriers without addressing digital access. For women facing employment barriers, building a self-sufficient life requires affordable internet access and internet enabled devices along with the digital literacy skills.

Digital Access is One More Barrier to Overcome

The Women's Bean Project serves women who face multiple, compounding barriers to employment. "Some of the most common barriers are having been incarcerated or justice-involved. Not having graduated high school, being a single mother," Morgenroth explains. "All of our participants are well below the federal poverty level before they start and most have not had a significant employment history."

These aren't isolated blockers. They're interconnected — and lack of digital access is yet another barrier. As Morgenroth notes, all of the women in the program "would fall into one or multiple" of the categories most affected by the digital divide: low-income, lower education levels, and specific demographics that have historically been excluded from digital access.

That’s why digital literacy isn't an add-on to the social enterprise’s employment program. It's a core component.

Exclusion Looks Different in a Digital World

The number of important activities that require digital access has expanded far beyond what many people realize. Morgenroth lays it out: "It's a big part of being self-sufficient — finding and applying for benefits, finding housing programs, etc. With the changes in SNAP recently, being able to stay on top of what's going on is important. Then, of course, being able to be competitive and apply to jobs."

For most of the program's participants — who are single mothers — the digital demands multiply their challenges. "School is increasingly more and more digitized and online, and homework and many elements of supporting their kids in school requires moms to be digitally competent ," Morgenroth says.

This is where the intersectionality of equity work becomes impossible to ignore. A mother who can't navigate her child's school portal is experiencing more than a digital divide problem — she's experiencing an education equity problem, a parenting support problem, and ultimately, a poverty perpetuation problem.

The Tools Needed to Compete for Employment

Think about how this affects employment. What should be straightforward becomes exhausting and time-consuming when basic digital skills are missing. "When I sit down and work with women applying to jobs, it's really apparent when people don't have the basic skills," Morgenroth explains, "Applying to two to three jobs could take an hour for the average person. It can take somebody lacking digital skills two hours to apply to one job."

Now think about how much longer, and how much more difficult it would be for that person to apply using only their cell phone. Access means more than an internet account. It includes affordable internet-enabled devices that are up to the task.

The skills gap is wide-ranging. Some women who come to the Women’s Bean Project need the absolute basics — how to navigate a desktop, how to find a file on that desktop, how to get onto the internet. Others need to improve typing skills, learn to attach files to emails, and draft professional messages. Some women arrive with solid foundational skills but need to level up to compete for administrative and office positions.

Privacy and Safety: Hidden Risk Factors

Beyond basic access and skills, Morgenroth identifies privacy protection as critical across all skill levels. "There's more and more scams and robocalls and all these things online, so protecting privacy is a big, big factor."

Without proper digital literacy, women can wind up on unsafe sites while trying to find work. The job market has fully digitized, but support systems haven't kept pace. The assumption that everyone can just "figure it out" locks many people out from economic opportunity.

Women who've experienced incarceration, domestic violence, or other traumas may face real safety risks if they don't know how to protect their information online. The digital world assumes everyone understands privacy settings and can spot scams — putting unprepared women at higher risk.

Where the NTEN Digital Inclusion Fellowship Comes In

Morgenroth recognizes that effective digital equity work must be personalized and comprehensive. The plan she’s working on as a NTEN Digital Inclusion Fellow includes developing an assessment tool to identify each participant's starting point. The plan is to create different tracks and online courses through Northstar Digital Literacy (a project of Literacy Minnesota), and provide completion certificates at various levels.

As part of her Fellowship project, Morgenroth has plans to solve the internet-enabled device challenge as well. "Our hope is that we're able to provide a personal device to each person that completes those courses, so that when they graduate from the digital literacy program — and from our program in general— they are leaving with a reliable device."

The device piece matters. As she notes, they've seen partnerships where "the device will break, and then we aren't able to provide tech support." Through their emerging partnership with PCs for People — one of our current customers — they're addressing this by ensuring ongoing support comes with the devices.

This is a perfect example of different elements of digital equity working together to address the complex challenges in creating continuity in digital access.

The Ripple Effect: Scaling Impact

What makes this work particularly powerful is its potential to scale. Today, the Women's Bean Project employs an average of 62 women per year, but, as Morgenroth explains, “We have about 200 applications each time we're hiring, and we hire about 10 [for each cohort].” Once the expanded curriculum is complete, the goal is for their digital literacy program to serve women they can't currently employ — helping them become more marketable and find jobs elsewhere.

Their proximity to Warren Village — a housing program on the other side of their parking lot — presents another expansion opportunity. They're even considering on-site childcare to make classes accessible to mothers — a recognition that addressing one barrier (digital access and literacy) requires addressing another (childcare access).

“Our hope is that we have structure and the capacity for additional resources to implement this program.” Morgenroth says. They currently have volunteers who regularly reach out wanting to help teach digital literacy classes, but don’t yet have a program to take advantage of these offers.

Digital Equity Is Vital in Multiple Ways

Morgenroth listed out some key reasons why the Women's Bean Project decided to expand their digital literacy work, she puts it right alongside the other essential life skills: 

1. Financial literacy and budgeting
2. Being able to advocate for yourself
3. Digital access and literacy 

Digital access and literacy isn't a nice-to-have or an enrichment program. It's fundamental. "When they're looking for new housing, which is a goal that many women have, or when they're looking at buying a used car online, they need these skills," she explains. "You know, all of these things take being able to navigate the internet confidently and efficiently."

Building a Success Ecosystem

The Women's Bean Project's digital access and equity work demonstrates what should be obvious but often gets siloed — equity work cannot be compartmentalized. Digital equity, employment equity, housing equity, education equity, childcare access — they don't exist in separate boxes. They overlap, intersect, and depend on each other.

Rachel Morgenroth's journey from tech recruiting to the Women's Bean Project, and her current project as an NTEN Digital Inclusion Fellow, represents a recognition that social justice work demands integrated solutions. "I'm just in love with working with this organization and helping women transform their lives in a real long-term way," she says.

The goal is straightforward: "Our hope is that people graduate and they don't think, ‘Oh no, what am I gonna do?’ Instead, they’re thinking, ‘I can do this. I have the skills. I have the resources. I have the ability and confidence to navigate this on my own.’ "