In 2017, Porter wandered into uncharted territory.
She first set foot inside the Cedar Extension High Rise as part of the annual Meeting of the Minds Summit, a national urban sustainability and connected technology conference. It was there she learned that Cleveland has a huge ongoing connectivity issue: 30% of Cleveland households had no broadband internet access of any kind, making it the fourth most unconnected city in the United States.
“Without connectivity, you can’t apply for a job or do your homework or connect with a loved one,” says Dorothy Baunach, CEO of DigitalC, a nonprofit working to make Greater Cleveland’s digital future more equitable. “You’re not able to fully participate in society, and it’s an inexcusable situation in Cleveland.”
A closer look at the map shows that areas where more than 50% of households have no internet access are concentrated in neighborhoods such as Hough, Kinsman and parts of East Cleveland. These are all spots which were historically redlined — refused financial services and connectivity as part of the institutionalized racism of the 1960s that was designed to physically segregate communities.
“There’s a very direct connection between where poor people live and where people don’t have the internet,” says Bill Callahan, a Cleveland-based research and policy director for the National Digital Inclusion Alliance. “Everyone can have a fiber connection, but you won’t have access if you don’t have $70 a month to spend on a provider.”
For Porter, learning about these connectivity issues was eye-opening.
She had her degree in industrial and labor relations and had built a career doing custom software development for companies within various industries, such as university physical plants and manufacturing.
“My career was all about connectivity, helping various companies reach their consumers in user-friendly ways,” says Porter.
A decade of prior experience as a restaurant owner further cemented her ability to connect through food and community.
“Food was what always brought my family together and I wanted to provide that same food for others,” says Porter, who grew up in the South and was now a single parent to two daughters.
At the time of the summit, Porter had been working as a consultant for Peaceful Fruits, an Akron-based company that makes all-natural fruit strips to benefit kids who lack access to healthy, alternative snacks.
“That experience opened my eyes to start thinking about people who want good food for their kids, but they can’t afford a dollar and change for a small fruit snack,” says Porter.
Each of these opportunities cultivated Porter’s passion to help others connect with one another and thrive. The Meeting of the Minds Summit just opened the floodgate to yet another opportunity.
“Even though I was learning about all of this current inequality, I was also seeing solutions,” says Porter.
She was intrigued to learn that Cedar Extension had just gotten affordable internet access. In 2016, DigitalC came in to connect each individual resident by running the fiber connection from the adjacent rooftop of St. Vincent Charity Medical Center through the copper wires in the roof. By the time Porter visited, all 155 residents were online.
“I left there that day thinking this was an incredible thing, but that there were still all of these barriers like computer literacy,” says Porter. “What I wanted to know was how seniors who hadn’t been exposed to the internet were using their connectivity.”
Porter approached Jeff Patterson, the CEO of CMHA, to see if she could set up a focus group of seniors at Cedar Extension to learn more about them and their internet use. More than 20 people showed up to the first meeting. They told Porter that they were really only using the internet for Facebook and to play solitaire. But what began as a conversation about internet access quickly became a sharing of health-related problems — diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure, obesity — affecting not just their lives, but the lives of their children and grandchildren.
There was Larry Carter, the former line cook at Lancer Steakhouse who showed off the prosthetic leg he received after losing his foot from diabetes complications.
There was Miss Terri, a stronger voice in the group. She was a Vietnam War veteran who had lived in Cedar Extension for about 10 years and suffered from high blood pressure and gastroparesis, a disease of the stomach eased by healthier eating.
And there was Miss Queenie, who moved to Cleveland from Alabama as a 21-year-old in 1964. She wanted to eat better, but was quick to highlight the high price of healthier foods and how difficult it was to get to healthier offerings in the food desert surrounding Cedar Extension.
“People shouldn’t have to struggle with being healthy because of where they live,” says Porter. “I felt so much compassion for these people.”
So, Porter got to work. She polled the group for some of their favorite foods and began researching healthier alternatives. But the process proved difficult when she realized there was a plethora of pages, backstories and blogs to scour through to find reliable resources that were accessible. She also learned literacy levels would be a potential obstacle.
“I had just read that two out of three Clevelanders were functionally illiterate, so there was yet another barrier,” says Porter. “I knew at that point that we needed an idea that could access recipes online, make them healthy and make them readable.”
