Abhinav Bellapu, Zakaria Kortam, and Gaurish Agrawal have watched many of their friends struggle to access the internet. Dismayed at the digital divide in their own backyard, they have been striving to solve this problem, both at home and abroad. Together, they direct a nonprofit called ClosingTheDivide, focused on collecting used electronic devices, refurbishing them, and then donating them to low-income families and students.

Evergreen Valley students (pictured: Gaurish Agrawal, Abhinav Bellapu, Zakaria Kortam, and Nishanth Tharakan) have been working towards bridging the 'digital divide' ‐ the unequal distribution of access to technology and the inter‐ net between members of society. CTD’s e-waste program is based on a simple premise, “One man’s trash is another man’s treasure.” When the upper and middle class discard their working devices with every new consumer electronics release, those devices end up in landfills.

CTD’s e‐waste program is based on a simple premise, “One man's trash is another man's treasure.” The organization’s research determined that the digital divide was coupled with another issue of e‐ waste. When the upper and middle class discard their working devices with every new consumer electronics release, those devices end up in landfills, destroying the environment and polluting cities. The organization collects dis‐ carded devices, refurbishes them, and then distributes them to the underprivileged. CTD picks up the devices at the time and location of the donor’s choice to incentivize donations by making them as convenient as possible.

San José, CA — High school students Anish Thalamati, and Ankit Kapoor, co-founders of the nonprofit Closing the Divide, have teamed up with Oakland-based nonprofit Tech Exchange to narrow the digital divide for students across the San José Bay Area. What started as an Evergreen Valley High School class assignment by two eleventh grade STEM students has grown into a nonprofit, Closing the Divide. “After learning about the often undercovered issue of the digital divide in my computer science principles class, I began to realize the inequity in terms of access to technology even in high tech areas, such as Silicon Valley,'' says Anish Thalamati. The two boys “set up initiatives to raise money for low-income households in an attempt to decrease the digital divide.”