Since we’re asking our partner agencies for their origin stories to aid in writing an experience paper to help new agencies start, we figured it was a good idea to formalize ours. Barry covered much of this in his blog posts, but basically.

After thirty years in the computer/communication industry, Barry’s employment was terminated in October of 2014.

Over the last five years, he had been volunteering with the Peoples Resource Center, teaching an introduction to computers class as well as others. Once he had more time, he explored the notion of  introducing a program to refurbish computers and provide training in Milwaukee, his home town.  Milwaukee County is the same relative size as DuPage County, and has a similar resource base and need.

Initial thoughts were that PRC could serve as a mentor organization, documenting best practices and providing guidance. With some encouragement, the concept quickly grew to establishing a mechanism for existing non-profit agencies engaged in this work to communicate, build upon each other’s successes, and foster the growth of new agencies to help address the digital divide in their communities. It helped that in the past year, Katherine had been working part-time at Fermilab on web design and content creation. As a prolific author, she had maintained a WordPress blog for years, and so felt confident of being able to create and maintain a reasonable website.

Thus, was the concept of PBDD born. Barry did the work to become a nonprofit. Maryanna Milton agreed to be a board member. We are still getting started, and as Barry likes to say, we look forward to the next steps.