How residents of Sacramento’s Lemon Hill are raising their digital IQ
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Sac State’s pilot project trained Lemon Hill residents in tech use.
- Digital navigators taught skills like AI tools, email, resumes and PDFs.
- $3M federal grant funded classes, device access and multilingual instruction.
Sacramento State student Sheng-Chang Chen hopped off his bike and headed into a classroom at Asian Resources Inc. to teach his neighbors in Sacramento’s Lemon Hill neighborhood how to use apps, laptops, the internet and other tools of the digital world.
In this south Sacramento neighborhood, one in four residents live in poverty, according to U.S. Census Bureau data, and the median household income hovers around $50,000, about half the median for all California households.
Greater digital access can improve residents’ access to many resources including employment listings, housing, education, health care, job training and other types of online education, said Guillermo Duran, part of a Sacramento State pilot project called Connecting Minority Communities.
The university and its community partners, including Asian Resources, secured a $3 million federal grant to work on expanding the number of Lemon Hill residents who feel competent and comfortable with technology. They have distributed laptops through some nonprofits and, working with others, they hired Chen and other university students to be digital navigators to offer how-to lessons.
“We’re just looking to improve participants’ lives — especially in Lemon Hill, that’s our target area — and hopefully, they can grow and they can incorporate these skills and obtain better employment as well,” said Duran, a project management analyst at Sacramento State.
While about five navigators, including Chen, help their neighbors at ARI, Sac State has deployed other students to La Familia Counseling, the Teichert branch of the Boys and Girls Club and Mutual Housing California. The navigators speak multiple languages — English, Spanish, Vietnamese, Urdu, Mandarin and more. One student leads the lesson, and others float around the class to work individually with participants.
The navigators at Asian Resources said they listen to feedback from participants, many of whom are seniors, immigrants or low-income residents, when deciding what lessons to offer.
Since the program began operating last year, it has served about 800 Lemon Hill residents — a neighborhood of about 15,000 — through courses, outreach at farmers markets, and tech device distributions. The grant-funded effort is set to conclude on Nov. 30, but organizers are working to increase awareness and engagement before it ends.
Most of Lemon Hill, located in ZIP code 95824, sits within the confines of the Gold Line light-rail tracks to the west, Fruitridge Road to the north, 47th Avenue to the south and the western boundary of Depot Park.
So far, the digital navigators have trained class participants in such tasks as how to format resumes; use artificial intelligence, or AI; send emails; connect with their medical teams and create PDF files that preserve the original document format even when sent electronically.
Like most of the digital navigators, Chen lives in the Lemon Hill neighborhood, and he said he’s enjoyed getting to know his neighbors through the class. A junior majoring in computer science and math, Chen teaches at ARI two days a week and often bicycles over since he lives so close.
He and the other digital navigators have been patient and helpful, said Trinh Ly, a participant in the Asian Resources class. Now 67, Ly immigrated to the U.S. when she was 44 and had to quickly learn some basic English to get a job. Before retiring, she worked as a housekeeper at a local hotel chain.
Tech access opens doors to opportunity
Another participant, Yueqiang “Leonard” Zhong, 75, was once a supervisor at Wrigley Confectionary (now Mars) in Guangzhou, China. After he retired, he and his wife decided to join their daughter and her family by relocating to the U.S. Though he had used Microsoft Office tools at work, Zhong said he’d gotten rusty after retirement and needed to improve at working in the English language.
“I still can work for the community,” perhaps volunteering, Zhong said, “so I’d like to learn the computer to get confidence in my ability.”
He’s now learned to use Microsoft Word, send emails and even explore AI tools like ChatGPT.
In late July, Burhan Babar, a junior computer engineering major at Sacramento State, trained Ly, Zhong and other participants in how to convert documents to PDFs and fill out those documents, an essential skills for job applications, government forms and online communication.
He walked the class through step-by-step instructions: opening Google Docs, writing short personal statements and saving the documents.
“Why do we use PDFs? We use PDFs because they are easy to read and they are hard to change accidentally,” Babar said. “A PDF is basically an image which contains information, so they’re not easily changeable, so that means they’re safe.”
In an interview after the class, he said these classes are as rewarding for him as they are for the residents.
“I really wanted to help out people — that’s always been one of my goals,” said Babar, who moved to Sacramento from Pakistan at 9. “It’s actually great meeting new people, getting to know them more.”
The digital equity initiative underscores a broader challenge facing communities like Lemon Hill. Researchers found that, during the COVID-19 pandemic, disparities in internet access and digital literacy widened, especially in poor and less-educated communities. Residents without computer skills were often left behind, limiting access to telehealth, online education and job opportunities.
Sac State’s digital literacy project hopes to change that, one class at a time, Duran said.
In one digital literacy class at La Familia, he said, most of the participants came in not knowing anything about personal computers or laptops, so the digital navigators began by teaching them some very basic actions: how to turn a device on or off and the difference between right clicks and left clicks on a mouse.
“Then, from there, we actually have participants that are more at an intermediate level, dealing with a lot of Microsoft programs, Excel, PowerPoint, Adobe and how to look for online employment opportunities as well,” he said.
Digital resources in Lemon Hill
Here’s where Lemon Hill residents can go to get information on free digital literacy training.
- Asian Resources Inc.: Call 916-454-1892 or email info@asianresources.org, or visit ARI headquarters, 6270 Elder Creek Rd., in Sacramento.
- La Familia Counseling Center: Call (916) 210-8773, email info@lafcc.org or visit the Maple Neighborhood Center, 3301 37th Ave., in Sacramento.
- Teichert Branch of the Boys & Girls Club: Serves children ages 6-18. Call (916) 392-2582 or visit 5212 Lemon Hill Ave., to learn how your child can participate.
- Mutual Housing California: Residents of Mutual Housing on the Greenway and Mutual Housing at Lemon Hill can get training in their communities.
- Sacramento City College: Digital literacy services will be available at Learning Resource Center Room 141 from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Monday through Thursday until Aug. 22. Starting Aug. 25 residents can find help at Room LRC 318 from 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Monday through Friday.
- Cosumnes River College: Learning Resource Center Room 204 offers digital literacy services from 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Mondays and Wednesdays, 9 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. Tuesdays and Thursdays and 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Fridays.
This story was originally published August 12, 2025 at 7:00 AM.
CORRECTION: Due to incorrect information given to The Bee, an earlier version of this story misstated the number of Lemon Hill residents who have taken these digital literacy classes.
