Meeting the Challenge: The Hopkins Digital Access Initiative, Then and Now

Welcome to Hopkins, Minnesota

Hopkins, Minnesota is a small town of around 19,000 residents less than 20 miles west of Minneapolis. Compared to the surrounding suburbs, Hopkins is just a tiny little 4.2 square miles, with a fantastic main street and far more renters than homeowners. It also has a very different diversity than the surrounding areas, with a very high percentage of immigrant population and second language learners.

Many of its neighboring suburbs are referred to as "mall cities" — built around large retail corridors with a significant tax base to match. Hopkins is a different kind of community centered on a vibrant and walkable downtown.

New residents face familiar challenges. How do they get connected? How do they sign up for utilities? How do they get to know what is available? How do they do all of the things that you would need to do just to live and work and play in today's society? Where are the parks? Where can they find daycare?

There are a lot of things that are hidden within any community, and Hopkins is small enough that a lot of people know where most of those services are located. But today, even in a little gem of a community like Hopkins, a lot of that information is online. And the way the city reaches its residents is digitally — email, social media. That is not the way a lot of Hopkins residents communicate with each other or with the city.

That gap inspired the Hopkins Digital Access Initiative – well before a local emergency kicked it into high gear.

Responding to an Emergency

ICE enforcement activity began in the Minneapolis area in December 2025. By January 2026, Latino and Somali residents in Hopkins were so afraid, in many cases, that they were unable to leave their homes. They couldn't even go into their own front yard, let alone go to work or out to take care of basic needs like shopping.

For residents without digital access, the isolation compounded quickly. School wasn't happening. Healthcare and doctor's appointments were being stopped. Government assistance — much of which has moved online — was out of reach. Connecting with family in another state was nearly impossible.

The Hopkins Digital Access Initiative was still in its assessment and engagement phase, guided by Connecting to Thrive, an area mission-driven organization that helps small to medium sized communities build meaningful access to digital skills, technology help, and essential resources. The Initiative was not yet equipped to respond directly. But the foundation of relationships was in place.

On a Sunday afternoon, Rebekah Crosby, co-founder of Connecting to Thrive, sent an email to Angela Siefer, Executive Director of National Digital Inclusion Alliance (NDIA). The subject line: Help needed in MN.

The email went out at 2:52 p.m. CST Siefer responded just 4 minutes later. Just 10 minutes later, Siefer had connected the team to 35 Mile Foundation. The response was underway within 24 hours.

“The NDIA team was profoundly moved by the crisis unfolding in Minnesota. When HDAI reached out, we were grateful for the opportunity to support them and their community during such a difficult time. We know that in times of emergency, local digital inclusion practitioners are lifelines for vulnerable communities. 

We also knew that 35 Mile Foundation could be a vital partner to meet the connectivity needs HDAI described. By collaborating with HDAI, NDIA is transforming local response into valuable insights and lessons learned that strengthen the entire digital inclusion field. Supporting Hopkins today helps us create a blueprint to support and empower any community that may face a crisis tomorrow.”

" - Angela Siefer, Executive Director, NDIA

The Digital Divide Was Already There

Back in 2024, Connecting to Thrive co-founders Rebekah Crosby and Carolyn Leslie had walked into Beth Kivett's building at the Hopkins Activity Center to learn about seniors struggling with technology. Kivett, the Hopkins Activity Center Manager for the City of Hopkins, was still reeling from a recent conversation with an older resident.

Not long before they arrived, the woman had come into Kivett's office, crying. She had lost $60,000 in an internet scam — her entire life savings. "She was humiliated," Kivett says. "Just the fear that they put in her was awful."

Leslie had seen a version of this problem in her own family, spending years supporting her elderly parents as more and more of their healthcare and government assistance moved online.

Leslie and Crosby explained the approach of Connecting to Thrive to Kivett and the opportunity for the Hopkins community to collaboratively develop a digital access plan. They talked about the importance of cross-sector input and the importance of resident involvement. As a long time Hopkins resident and member of city staff, Kivett believed Hopkins was a good fit for this community-based approach.

Kivett started by connecting Leslie and Crosby with others in Hopkins who would be interested. This included Margaret Breen, the head librarian at the Hopkins Public Library and Lindsey Leseman, the director of Hopkins Community Education. Breen and Leseman saw digital access barriers impacting residents and also wanted to take action. Within weeks, they formed a steering committee that committed to guide the Hopkins Digital Access Initiative.

With Connecting to Thrive as the backbone support, the Hopkins Digital Access Initiative team began its work. Its first step was to directly engage with residents, businesses, organizations, and other community stakeholders to learn more about what digital access challenges they were experiencing and raise awareness about how they could work together to find solutions that fit the community.

Building the Relationships That Made It Possible

"We never thought we'd come in and tell people what to do — because that's not correct — we wanted to literally immerse ourselves in this community," Leslie says.

That immersion took two years. They went to music nights at the park and farmers markets. They showed up at fundraisers. They attended City Council meetings, business community meetings, and school-community partnership gatherings. They did asset mapping across civic, government, education, social services, and small business sectors. They sat down one-on-one with people. They used NDIA’s frameworks and tools to shape their approach. They showed up consistently, until people knew their names — and they knew everyone else's.

One of the very first people they met was Dan Narr, Executive Director of ICA Food Shelf — a food distribution organization that’s one of the central social service hubs in the Hopkins community. Narr is a powerful connector and provider. He immediately got it. He saw how critical the work of Connecting to Thrive is for the community. And when Kristin Lundgren came on as ICA's Director of Operations and Client Services, Narr made sure she was woven into the Hopkins Digital Access Initiative steering committee.

By early 2024, less than a year after first meeting Kivett, the Hopkins Digital Access Initiative was presented to the Hopkins City Council. When the presentation ended, the council applauded.

Putting a Coalition to Work

What took place during the ICE incursion of the area resulted in a demonstration of what a coalition can accomplish when relationships are already in place.

Digital access, as the team sees it, is a three-legged stool — internet-enabled devices, internet access, and digital skills. "If you only have a couple legs to that stool, you do not have a seat at the table," says Kivett. All three had to arrive together. And they did.

35 Mile Foundation committed within a day of the call and provided funding a few days later. NDIA contributed ongoing consulting support through their Associate Director of Special Projects, who became, in Crosby's words, "our resource, our phone-a-friend, our immediate support to answer questions of how to get up and going." 

Full disclosure, our own Cassie Bair is the NDIA Board Treasurer. This is another example of how being part of a strong digital equity network helped during an emergency.

NDIA also donated the time of Senior Program manager Nate Stone, who created a customized training just for the digital navigators in Hopkins and hosted it live so they could interact with him directly. ICA Food Shelf brought its deep knowledge of who needed help and how to reach them — through its emergency grocery delivery network, emergency utility assistance contacts, and the social workers already embedded in the community. PCs for People, based in St. Paul, supplied the refurbished laptops.

Eight community volunteers stepped up to be trained as digital navigators through NDIA's program. The bar for volunteering was kept intentionally accessible. The skill set needed wasn't about rewriting websites or repairing hardware. "If you are comfortable with your own device and you're able to upload pictures, and submit things online, and fill out forms, and browse the web, and have some ability with the settings — that's all you really need," Kivett said.

The result was 100 laptops, affordable internet through hotspots, and trained human support — all deployed to residents who desperately needed them.

Reaching People at Home

Reaching people who were isolated at home meant solving problems — and solving them fast.

The Initiative team sat down with ICA Food Shelf staff around big white sheets of paper and thought through every step. How do you get resources to someone who can't come to you? How do you make an application that someone without a device can fill out? How do you make sure names and addresses stay private for people who have been traumatized?

The answer was red envelopes that couldn’t be ignored and didn’t look like junk mail. ICA's grocery delivery network was already going to residents' doors — requests had surged from around 150 deliveries a month to 900 a month in a matter of weeks. The team created applications in English and Spanish, tucked them into envelopes with a sticker on the front — Need a computer? — and sent them out with the groceries, so someone receiving a delivery could open the envelope and apply for the pilot program.

"It was THE best pilot project. Because we saw what worked and what didn't, but we could also pivot very, very quickly." 

— Rebekah Crosby

Details were refined on the fly. A half-sheet application became a full sheet. The program was explained clearly: a device would come with a required training, because everyone needed to have some skin in the game, and the team would follow up to make sure things were working.

The City of Hopkins moved with the same speed. The initiative needed a shared phone number — a line residents could call, with a voicemail that would reach the whole team. Kivett made a call. Almost overnight, the number existed, set up and routing to everyone's email by the city's IT department. Kivett recorded the greeting in English. Then she recorded it again in Spanish.

That speed reflects something true about a small city government. "Instead of having a team of people in a department, there's just a couple of us," Kivett explains. "That ladder just isn't quite as high. It's a little more spread out, and we're just really able to do more." The same tight network and willingness to say “Yes” that made Hopkins a strong community for this initiative is what made quickly setting up communications infrastructure possible.

Achieving Proof of Concept

Crosby and Leslie made one of the first deliveries of devices themselves. They brought a laptop to a resident who had applied through the program. The resident thanked them and said, "Now I can do my doctor's appointments. Now I can start searching for a job." As they walked back to their car, Crosby turned to Leslie. "I knew it," she said. Obviously, she knew it — but to see it first-hand was something different — it was clear proof of concept for the Initiative.

At one Hopkins apartment building, about 10 residents now have devices. The social worker who assists people in the building has told the Initiative team how terrific it is to be able to teach someone to set up a doctor's appointment so they can do a virtual visit — but not on the social worker's computer. The residents can now do it on their own. Every time someone from the team visits the building, residents ask: "Is today the next training class?"

By working together, the members of the Hopkins Digital Access Initiative trained local digital navigators who are ready and eager. They're doing as-requested support as well as drop-in hours at different locations, as well as a HUD housing location in Hopkins. 

Growing What Works

At a recent Initiative stakeholder meeting, ideas were flowing. People who had seen what happened when devices and support reached people in need were energized. New directions are emerging: English language learning paired with digital access, workforce development, economic development tools for residents entering or reentering the job market. Populations that hadn't been the primary focus when the Initiative started are now being identified and outreach to them has begun.

Do you remember the woman who was in Beth Kivett's office crying because she had lost $60,000 in a scam? Well, she inspired scam prevention training, something that’s now on the teaching agenda. A local banker told the group that in 2025 clients of the bank had lost $1.8 million to scams in a single year. And that figure has doubled half-way through 2026! Digital navigators are now viewed as a resource to help residents identify scams, double-check suspicious communications, and protect themselves.

The emergency also brought the Initiative into a broader national network. At NDIA’s Net Inclusion national conference in Chicago in February 2026, the team spoke in a three-minute lightning round presentation in front of 800 people. They didn't even step off the stage before representatives from PCs for People in St. Paul came up to talk to them about the Initiative. An informal session drew people from across the country asking what they could do to support the work in Minnesota.

"We're not looking to reinvent the wheel at all," Leslie says. "We're trying to build on the wheel and build in partnerships with others."

Offering People the Tools to Thrive

The lesson from Hopkins is that when organizations bring their resources, relationships, and expertise to a shared moment of need, the community benefits in ways that extend far beyond the original emergency. And you don’t need to have a crisis to get started.

The Hopkins Digital Access Initiative is ongoing. The digital navigators are trained and in the field. The coalition continues to build partnerships. And the scope of the work has expanded — not just to serve residents isolated by an emergency, but to serve everyone in the community who’s navigating a world that is moving faster than the support systems built to help them.

Technology is changing quickly. That is true for older adults. It’s true for people with language barriers. It’s true for immigrants who are trying to navigate a complex — and increasingly online — bureaucracy. And it’s true for anyone trying to keep up.

The positive energy from the stakeholder’s meeting continues to flow through this dedicated group. They are really focusing on the ways people can benefit in job search, workforce development, and economic development.  

"We can give our community members the tools they need to thrive in this new, digital world." 

— Rebekah Crosby

Want to support members of the Hopkins Digital Access Initiative? Visit their websites to learn how.

Connecting to Thrive

ICA Food Shelf

If you live in Hopkins, and are curious about the services offered by the Hopkins Activity Center, visit them on the City of Hopkins website.