Digitising disadvantaged communities

With technology constantly evolving and the world becoming more digitised by the day, many communities across the world are struggling to keep up with the overwhelming surge.

The Equinix Foundation is working to help ease the pressure by providing greater access to essential technology globally. Equinix Foundation director Sujata Narayan and president Bruce Owen joined The HR Leader to discuss the work their organisation is doing to strive for digital inclusion.

“We realised that we wanted to have equal impact on both the environmental and the social side … One of the ways that we could do that was to … create a separate entity called the Equinix Foundation, and we did that, and we seeded it with $50 million, and we said that the purpose of this $50 million is going to be pointed towards this idea around digital inclusion,” explained Mr Owen.

“What digital inclusion is, it’s a very broad term, but I think about it in terms of equitable access. So equitable access to tech jobs or equitable access to online learning or internet access.”

Ms Narayan said that the pandemic heightened the need for digital inclusion strategy. With more and more people forced to work from home, there is a significant digital divide.

According to the United Nations, 37 per cent of the world’s population have never used the internet. Without internet access, opportunities for education, work, and overall connectivity with the world are restricted.

“The opportunities that having access to digital technology enables, access to educational platforms or jobs … The online space is also seen increasingly as a space of power and where power is held. More and more communities are seeing the internet as a way of good governance,” Ms Narayan said.

“The pandemic absolutely shone a spotlight on what the issue is and why it’s so critical that we ensure that everybody has an opportunity to access the full range of possibility that connectivity enables and provides.”

The Equinix Foundation is utilising stakeholders to help bring their dream of worldwide connectivity to reality. Collaboration is a key aspect of Equinix that extends beyond digitisation.

Ms Narayan continued: “We are Equinix team, and these teams are empowered and enabled to come together around things such as wellbeing, volunteerism, community impact, diversity, inclusion, belonging, fun, green issues, and things related to the environment.

“Last year, after the conflict with Ukraine broke out, we had employees in Amsterdam say, ‘How can we help? We want to do something.’ And so, they were able to get their hands on a number of Equinix computers that they were able to refurbish and donate to a community group that is supporting Ukrainian refugees,” she said.

Equinix has also partnered with other organisations to assist in digitisation. “One of them is an organisation called World Pulse, which is an online social platform for women from over 250 countries to come together and talk about the issues that matter to them,” said Ms Narayan.

“These are often women coming from some of the most marginalised communities in the world. And so, to have a safe online space where they are trained to become digital leaders and to begin to talk about and raise awareness about the causes they care about, it’s profound, and this is an aspect of digital inclusion.”

The transcript of this podcast episode, when quoted above, was slightly edited for publishing purposes. The full audio conversation with Sujata Narayan and Bruce Owen on 3 February is below, and the original podcast article can be found here.