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Late September brought new technology upgrades to the Evergreen Goodwill Bellingham Job Training and Education Center (JTE), thanks to a six-figure investment from Comcast.
At a ceremony on September 29 attended by Bellingham Mayor Seth Fleetwood and Washington State Senator Simon Sefczyk, the two partners officially unveiled improvements to the Lift Zone and Community Space at Bellingham Place.
With new technology and improved audio-visual equipment – cameras, microphones and speakers – the center’s two rooms are designed to facilitate the video conferencing experience, now combined to form one large room.
“The state-of-the-art audio and visual technology allows Evergreen Goodwill to seamlessly host hybrid and virtual events and classes,” said Darryl Campbell, the charity’s president and CEO, at the ceremony.
The Bellingham JTE Center has been serving more than 10,000 students for over 25 years, offering everything from English and citizenship education to computer literacy, GED completion, job training and college exploration.
Tech
Matthew Pell, a former Evergreen Goodwill teacher who is now the company’s digital equity manager, said the new wall-mounted cameras can be manually controlled by teachers from their desks. Additionally, ceiling-mounted microphones provide full audio coverage of the entire classroom, allowing virtual students to hear other students asking a teacher.
“It provides a smoother online experience for our students and staff,” Pell said.
In addition, new wall panels display video information and complement the smart boards in each room. Comcast has installed Lift Zone Wi-Fi, which provides enhanced high-speed wireless Internet access to the JTE Center. As of November 2020, the internet service provider has launched more than 90 Lift Zones in Washington state to help families with limited or no internet access at home.
This infrastructure adds to the additional support received by Evergreen Goodwill, including the use of 118 Chromebook laptops for JTE students. The computers are shared as needed between the five Evergreen Goodwill JTE centers in King, Kitsap, Skagit, Snohomish and Whatcom counties.
Even older technology is still being used: 20 iPads that used to help students learn English with Rosetta’s language software are now being used for voter registration.
Eileen Aparis, Evergreen Goodwill’s vice president of mission, said continuing digital improvements are critical to meeting the community’s volunteering needs.
“We have these four walls, but we go beyond the four walls, because we know that our students cannot always come to us.”
Another of those improvements is the recent launch of the Digital Equity Bus (DEB), which provides a mobile classroom in greater Whatcom County.
After testing sessions at both the Everson Nooksack Valley School District and the Kendall East Whatcom Resource Center, the bus is equipped with six Chromebook laptops, comfortable seating for up to a dozen students, reliable internet and one of the same smart boards used at the Bellingham JTE. Classrooms. A significant number of students who used DEB during the pilot process were Ukrainian immigrants.
The effect
Pell told two stories at the Sept. 29 ceremony.
In the first, six members of a Guatemalan family used online learning services to take citizenship and ESL classes. Three of the family members continue to study English, while the other three recently passed their citizenship test in Seattle with flying colors.
The second story brought a former student to the classroom’s attention. A woman, living in a homeless shelter at Bellingham Base Camp, approached PL one day with a large duffel bag and all her belongings inside.
The woman was about to leave, but Pell talked her into it and helped her enroll in a high school completion course. JTE Center staff also helped her get started living at Agape Home for Women, as well as resume building, which helped her land a retail job at Bellingham Goodwill.
Today, the woman has a high school diploma, lives in an apartment and does volunteer work while attending a local higher education nursing program.
These stories show why digital skills and equity are central to Evergreen Goodwill’s mission: because jobs change lives. As a former teacher, Pell said it’s been gratifying to see the success of the program.
“To see the huge impact we can have on someone’s life is amazing,” he said. “We develop a personal relationship with our students. When they come back and say, ‘I got my GED, I got this new job, I got a promotion,’ it’s great. It drives us.”
And in a world that can often see it in a negative light, Pell says being part of this mission—fueled in part by an incredible amount of technology—holds promise for the larger goal of reducing societal inequity.
“We’re a small group of people, but if we can change one life at a time, time after time, that gives me hope,” he said. “Knowing that we can help someone in a meaningful way, big or small, is very powerful.”
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