The People Everyone Else Is Missing

In 2025, Human-I-T partnered with 60 Decibels, an independent impact measurement firm funded by GitLab, to answer a simple question: Is this actually working?

The answer was unambiguous. 81% of people served said their quality of life improved. And 66% had never had access to anything like this before Human-I-T showed up. For two-thirds of its recipients, Human-I-T isn’t supplementing an existing service. It’s the first one that showed up at all.

Fifteen million American households still don’t have a single computing device. The people inside that gap have names.

Enrique Rangel, 86, thought his time was done. He got internet access from Human-I-T and decided to travel the country with his partner instead.

After brain surgery, Terence Basher was living in a hostel and trying to stay connected to his family. Human-I-T connected him to low-cost internet. He called back every day for a week. Not for help. To pray for the people who had helped him.

At one of Human-I-T’s community events, a mother shared that her son, a child with a disability, was being bullied at school. She’s a single mom. She couldn’t miss work, and she couldn’t afford a computer to homeschool him. The device he received that day let him leave that environment and continue his education safely from home. One laptop gave her family a way out she didn’t have before.

Mr. Thornton Thomas is a veteran. After moving between counties in California, he lost access to his government benefits, caught in a bureaucratic gap between jurisdictions. He was living in his backyard. When a Human-I-T navigator called to offer low-cost internet service, he didn’t believe it. It sounded like a scam. But the navigator didn’t push a script. They listened. They said: “We got you. We understand what you’re going through, and we’re not going to make this harder.” He broke down crying on the phone. Today, Mr. Thomas drives trailers across the country with his husband, with reliable internet wherever they go.

When Everything Burns, a Laptop Is the First Step Back

In January 2025, wildfires tore through Los Angeles. Thousands of people lost their homes, their belongings, and their ability to function in a world that runs on connectivity.

Human-I-T mobilized. At a community center in Pasadena, hundreds of wildfire-affected households showed up to receive computers and connect with resources. Local nonprofits, businesses, and city officials joined them. The room held grief and gratitude in equal measure.
One man at the event said it plainly: “I can’t even start to rebuild or get back on my feet without access to a computer.”

Another woman, Fabiola, was there. She came to the United States from Italy in 1992. She lost more than thirty years of her life in the fires. She’d been working remotely since 2020, so without a device, she couldn’t work at all. She found Human-I-T. The team got her a Samsung tablet. She wrote back to say she was crying when it arrived–her depression and anxiety had lessened, she’d started to smile again. She ended her message: “I owe it all to Human-I-T.”

Another recipient, Ashley King, lost everything except her dog, Lilo. She was living in her car. Human-I-T provided a free computer and a hotspot. She enrolled in school. She kept sending the team pictures of Lilo.

These individuals are just three of the 47,612 reasons Human-I-T kept pushing in 2025.

The Road to 2026

Fifteen million American households without a computing device. A structural failure that still demands a structural answer.

In 2026, Human-I-T enters healthcare for the first time, partnering with the National MS Society to provide laptops to patients referred through their navigator program. The Detroit hub on 7 Mile expands into a full community space. International refurbishment partnerships scale the circular economy model further. And the partnerships built in 2025 begin to compound.

But the ambition goes beyond devices and logistics. In 2026, Human-I-T will deepen its digital navigation program — the one-on-one support that connects people to low-cost internet, digital skills training, and the confidence to use technology toward their own goals. Thirty thousand households reached in 2025. The goal is to make that number look small. Because a laptop without support is just hardware. A laptop with a navigator, a connection, and a path forward is how you actually close the digital divide.

That’s what Human-I-T is building toward: the standard for how this country bridges the gap between the connected and the disconnected. Not just reuse. Not just devices. The full model — technology, connectivity, training, and human support — delivered with operational rigor and built to last.

Somewhere right now, someone is searching for the cheapest laptop they can afford. Someone is sitting in a parking lot borrowing a café’s Wi-Fi to apply for a job. Someone is trying to figure out how to get their kid back into school. We’re coming.