Saving the world a gigabyte at a time

PORTLAND — Rob Bole lets out the slightest giggle of glee.

He's on his way to a business meeting, piloting a Toyota Prius and geeking out over the computerized display in the dashboard that shows a real-time flowchart of where the car's power originates at any given moment: gas engine ... power cell ... gas engine ... power cell.

For a guy whose life revolves around technology, it's a beautiful thing.

With a Macintosh on his office desk and a beat-up BlackBerry on his hip, not to mention his middle-class suburban background, Bole seems an unlikely warrior in the battle against poverty.

Yet that's where he's headed in his rented technological wonder: back into the breach, trying to save the world one gigabyte at a time.

Bole, 40, is in charge of media development for One Economy, a multinational nonprofit that tries to bridge the gap between haves and have-nots by giving poor people Internet access.

With help from grants and donors, the Washington, D.C.,-based group buys low-income families computers and shows how to use them, brings broadband and Wi-Fi into public-housing complexes and creates content designed to help end poverty.

Content team

From his Portland office, Bole leads the team that comes up with that content — Web sites that teach how to apply for a home loan, get a GED, fill out a job application and register to vote.

Those might seem like simple skills. But they're the kinds of things, Bole says, that can help people in poverty reach the middle class, and along the way prevent urban centers from becoming soulless places that are home to only the very rich and the very poor.

"The idea is to give people a little bit of knowledge, a little bit of support, a little bit of access, and to trust them to know what's best for their lives," Bole says. "There's no such thing as a digital divide. It's just the cycle of poverty playing itself out all over again."

Bole is a 21st-century, Portland-style do-gooder: another of those well-educated, well-meaning men and women who want to change the world and still make it home in time to put the kids to bed.

He grew up near Philadelphia. In college at George Washington University, he took a few economics classes and found he was a systems guy. He saw how things fit together: Lego sets as a boy, entire communities as an adult.

After earning a master's in city planning at the University of Pennsylvania, he went to work as a planner in Philadelphia, concentrating on affordable housing.

In the early 1990s, Philly was in transition. The middle class had already abandoned core neighborhoods for the suburbs, leaving behind only those who couldn't afford to retreat.

Bole's job was to survey residents in blighted neighborhoods about what they wanted from government.

"One day I went to lunch, and when I came back, half a block was gone. They had just razed it because they suspected they were drug houses."

Still, the job wasn't depressing. "There were these indomitable people who were still trying to make their neighborhoods better," he said.

He found work with the city of Portland in 1995, again in affordable housing. The move from building homes to building computer networks took several steps.

First, he left the city for the nonprofit Enterprise Foundation, where he helped create a matching-fund program that allows poor people to get government help buying a first home, getting an education or starting a business.

Six years ago, he followed foundation President Rey Ramsey to One Economy.

"Rob is just a bundle of energy and ideas and optimism, and probably one of the most intellectually curious people I've ever met," Ramsey says.

A recent promotion put Bole in charge of establishing a global network of Web sites aimed at helping poor people escape poverty.

"I'm not too proud to say that in this field, nobody really knows what they're doing," Bole says. "Giving people the gadget isn't the problem. The real challenge is helping them find content, and producing content, that will actually allow them to improve their lives."

Content, content, content is the message he's carrying in his rented Prius — his wife has the family Subaru — to New Columbia, an 82-acre planned community in North Portland that mixes public housing with inexpensive private homes and apartments.

He's meeting with a nonprofit group that works to increase the number of women and minority contractors. Group leaders want advice on how to attract more young people to construction.

Bole nods intently, eyes ablaze with missionary zeal.

"You want to think about a viral way to pass along information. You want lots of cuts, use of Flash [(Web software)], maybe some online games, entertainment. And you want something that's easily accessible on a cellphone."

A cellphone? He points outside, in the direction of New Columbia's large central park. On the way in, he noticed small pockets of young men, boys in their mid- and late-teens, just hanging out.

Everyone's got them

"I will bet you as much as you want that every one of those guys has a cellphone in his pocket," Bole says. "And those are the people you're trying to reach, right?"

After the construction folks have thanked him, Bole walks to his car and takes another look at the crowd of kids.

"This is why I got into affordable housing," he says, meaning the New Columbia project. "I used to help build homes. Now I just wire them."

But, as he'd be the first to tell you, wiring them is the next step.