Executive Summary
In September 2025, SA Digital Connects, Methodist Healthcare Ministries, the Institute for Local Self-Reliance (ILSR), and digitalLIFT partnered with KC Digital Drive to host a Digital Divide Simulation in San Antonio, Texas. The immersive experience convened more than 60 civic, healthcare, nonprofit, philanthropic, and institutional leaders from across San Antonio and Bexar County to explore how digital exclusion compounds barriers across healthcare, workforce development, education, and public services.
Unlike traditional awareness-building events, the San Antonio Simulation was intentionally designed as a collective impact–oriented experience. A small but influential group of cross-sector partners co-designed the Simulation to build shared understanding, align perspectives, and identify opportunities for coordinated action—particularly as uncertainty around federal digital equity funding heightened the urgency for locally driven solutions.
Post-event evaluation demonstrated significant shifts in participant understanding and readiness to act. The Simulation reinforced that closing the digital divide requires more than technology access alone; it demands coordinated, community-driven efforts that integrate connectivity, devices, digital skills, and trusted human support.
Background: The Digital Divide Simulation
Developed by KC Digital Drive, the Digital Divide Simulation is an immersive learning experience designed to help decision-makers and community leaders understand the real-world impacts of digital exclusion. Modeled after poverty simulations, the exercise moves participants beyond abstract statistics and policy discussions by placing them inside the lived experience of individuals navigating daily life without reliable internet access, devices, or digital skills.
Participants are assigned realistic personas and asked to complete common tasks—such as applying for jobs, accessing healthcare, enrolling children in school, or interacting with government agencies—over a compressed period of time. The Simulation unfolds across multiple “months,” each introducing time pressure, incomplete information and compounding barriers that reflect real-life conditions.
The experience is intentionally designed to reveal how digital exclusion intersects with other systems like healthcare, workforce development, education, housing and public benefits, demonstrating that the digital divide is not a standalone issue, but a force multiplier that deepens existing inequities. Moments of frustration, navigation failure and informal peer support are core learning mechanisms that mirror how systems operate for digitally excluded residents.
Each Simulation is customized in partnership with local stakeholders to reflect regional priorities and realities. In San Antonio, planning partners centered healthcare access, broadband affordability and cross-agency coordination as defining features of the experience.
Local Context and Challenge
Despite growing recognition of digital inequity, leaders in San Antonio acknowledged that many stakeholders lacked firsthand exposure to how digital exclusion shapes everyday life—particularly for residents navigating healthcare, employment, and public services. While data and presentations had helped raise awareness, they had not fully conveyed the cumulative burden created by fragmented systems, inconsistent guidance, and limited digital skills.
At the same time, uncertainty surrounding federal digital equity funding created concern that momentum could stall without stronger local alignment. Planning partners identified the need for a shared experience that could move stakeholders from general awareness toward collective understanding and coordinated action.
As Rhia Pape, Executive Director of SA Digital Connects, explained:
“You can have a strong elevator pitch, but that’s not enough. This work needs time, conversation, and connection. The Simulation gave us a way to do that.”
Approach
A Collective Impact–oriented Planning Model
Rather than being hosted by a single organization, the San Antonio Digital Divide Simulation was co-designed by a small, cross-sector planning committee that shared responsibility for shaping the experience. While not representative of the full digital inclusion ecosystem, the group was intentionally composed to reflect multiple points of influence—funding, implementation, policy, and community engagement.
This collective impact–oriented approach emphasized:
- Building shared language around digital equity
- Surfacing assumptions and blind spots across organizations
- Creating alignment around the need for coordinated, rather than siloed, responses
Monica Gonzalez, Community Initiatives Manager at Methodist Healthcare Ministries, described the origins of the effort:
“The idea started over coffee with partners. At first, it was about sustainability—how we keep momentum beyond federal funding. Then, as policy changes unfolded, the timing became even more urgent.”
Intentional Stakeholder Convening
The planning committee prioritized participation from sectors whose decisions directly influence digital inclusion outcomes, including city and county officials, healthcare providers, workforce organizations, libraries, affordable housing groups, universities, funders, and state broadband representatives.
Pape noted the level of intentionality required:
“It took time to get the right people in the room. We had to make the case for why this mattered—and why they needed to experience it.”
Implementation
Participants assumed one of two roles:
- Individual Participants (IPs): Individuals navigating daily life with limited connectivity, devices, and digital skills
- Resource Participants (RPs): Staff representing agencies and institutions, often with incomplete information and limited visibility into services beyond their own organization
Personas and task lists were customized with input from the planning committee to reflect San Antonio–specific conditions, with particular emphasis on broadband access and healthcare navigation. Jordan Pittman, Digital Opportunity Lead at ILSR, explained:
“We wanted tasks that reflected what people actually experience day to day—especially around connectivity.”
Over four 15-minute “months,” IPs attempted tasks such as replacing documents, enrolling children in school, applying for jobs, and completing telehealth appointments. Stations included libraries, government offices, health centers, workforce agencies, utilities, and digital skills organizations. Informal spaces—such as a fast-food restaurant offering limited Wi-Fi—mirrored common real-world workarounds.
As the Simulation progressed, participants encountered mounting frustration, missed opportunities, and inconsistent guidance. At the same time, informal peer support emerged organically, reflecting both structural barriers and community resilience.
Outcomes and Impact
Establishing a Baseline
Pre-Simulation surveys revealed varied levels of familiarity with the digital divide, particularly regarding healthcare-related impacts. While many participants understood the issue conceptually, fewer had considered how fragmented systems and limited digital skills compound barriers in practice.
Participants cited motivations such as:
- “To better understand how digital inequity affects our community.”
- “To learn how to address the digital divide among the families we serve.”
Shifts in Understanding
Post-Simulation results demonstrated substantial impact:
- 45.5% reported their understanding was “very changed”
- 45.5% reported it was “somewhat changed”
- 95.5% felt “very prepared” to explain digital divide impacts within their organizations and networks
Notably, 100% of participants who initially reported being “not at all familiar” with the digital divide indicated their understanding was “very changed.”
Participant Insights
Participants consistently pointed to the power of role immersion. Jess Strom, Senior Program Manager at digitalLIFT, observed:
“The story element forces people to step into someone else’s reality. That’s what shifts perspective.”
Elissa Zertuche, Mentor and Digital Access Coordinator at Family Service, reflected on serving as a Resource Participant:
“I could see the discouragement when I had to say, ‘I can tell you where to go, but I can’t help you here.’ That happens every day.”
Post-Simulation reflections highlighted recurring themes:
- Fragmented systems create additional barriers for residents
- Agencies often lack awareness of resources outside their own scope
- Digital access must be treated as an essential need, not a luxury
Key Insights and Recommendations
Breakout discussions surfaced several core insights:
- Shared Understanding Enables Coordination: Progress depends on aligned language, expectations, and priorities across organizations.
- Trusted Intermediaries Are Essential: Libraries, healthcare providers, schools, and community organizations play a critical role in navigation and trust-building.
- Digital Skills Must Be Practical and Relevant: Training should focus on everyday needs such as telehealth access, job search, cybersecurity, and account management.
- Sustainability Requires Diverse Support: Communities must move beyond sole reliance on federal funding and actively demonstrate impact and return on investment.
Strategic Implications and Next Steps
Planning partners reported that the Simulation fundamentally changed how they view digital inclusion—not as a single programmatic issue, but as a shared challenge requiring coordination across organizations and sectors.
As Pittman summarized:
“We can’t put everything online without giving people the tools and access to use it.”
The planning committee is now working toward a shared message and more coordinated digital inclusion strategy for 2026, informed by the insights generated through the Simulation.
Conclusion
The San Antonio Digital Divide Simulation served as a powerful collective alignment moment. By immersing leaders in the lived realities of digital exclusion, the experience moved participants from abstract concern to concrete understanding, and from isolated efforts toward shared responsibility.
As one participant noted, the Simulation made the digital divide “real.” That shift from knowing to understanding has positioned San Antonio to pursue more coordinated, community-driven approaches to closing the digital divide.
Interested in watching their recap video? Follow the link here.
Why Use a Digital Divide Simulation?
Digital equity is often discussed through data, dashboards and policy frameworks. While essential, these tools rarely convey how digital exclusion is actually experienced, or how fragmented systems compound barriers for individuals and families.
A Digital Divide Simulation fills this gap by creating a shared, experiential learning environment for cross-sector leaders. Rather than telling participants what the digital divide looks like, the Simulation allows them to experience its cumulative effects firsthand.
What Simulations Do Well
Move from awareness to understanding
Participants feel the pressure of time, incomplete information, and limited access—revealing why even well-designed programs can fail without coordination.
Build shared language across sectors
When healthcare providers, funders, civic leaders, and service organizations experience the same constraints, it becomes easier to align around common definitions, priorities, and goals.
Surface blind spots and assumptions
Simulations expose how organizational silos, eligibility rules, and digital-first processes unintentionally create barriers—often in ways that are invisible from within a single institution.
Create conditions for collective action
Because the experience is shared, conversations after the Simulation are grounded in a common reference point, enabling more productive dialogue about coordination, roles and responsibility.
Why Simulations Matter for Collective Impact
Collective impact efforts depend on shared understanding, continuous communication and aligned action. The Digital Divide Simulation accelerates these conditions by helping participants:
- See how their work intersects with others’ roles
- Recognize where coordination breaks down
- Identify opportunities for collaboration that reduce friction for residents
Rather than prescribing solutions, the Simulation creates space for stakeholders to jointly identify what needs to change—and where collaboration can have the greatest effect.
A Tool, Not an Endpoint
The Digital Divide Simulation is not intended to replace data analysis, planning or program development. Instead, it functions as a catalyst, helping communities move from siloed efforts toward more coordinated, human-centered approaches to digital inclusion.
Follow this link to learn more about Digital Divide Simulations and learn about how you can bring it to the communities you serve. Questions? Reach out to Leslie Scott at lscott @ kcdigitaldrive dot org.