>> everyone deserves a bank account. in san francisco, anyone can have a bank account, things to an innovative program, bank on s.f. >> everyone is welcome, even if you are not a citizen or have bad credit to qualify for a bank account is simple. just live or work in san francisco and have a form of id. >> we started bank on s.f. six years ago to reach out to folks in the city who do not have a bank account. we wanted to make sure they know they have options which should be more low-cost, more successful to them and using chat catchers. >> check cashing stores can be

found all over the city, but they're convenient locations come with a hidden price. >> these are big. >> i remember coming in to collect -- charged a fee to collect a monogram. >> people who use check catchers, particularly those who use them to cash their paychecks all year long, they can pay hundreds, even a thousand dollars a year just in fees to get access to their pay. >> i do not have that kind of money. >> i would not have to pay it if i had a bank account. >> bank accounts are essential. they keep your money saved and that helps save for the future. most banks require information that may limit its pool of qualified applicants. encouraging to turn to costly and unsafe check captures. >> i do not feel safe carrying

the money order that i get home. >> without a bank account, you are more vulnerable to loss, robbery, or theft. thankfully, the program was designed to meet the needs of every kind, so qualifying for a bank account is no longer a problem. even if you have had problems with an account in the past, have never had an account, or are not a u.s. citizen, bank on s.f. makes it easy for you to have an account. >> many people do not have a bank account because they might be in the check system, which means they had an account in the past but had problems managing it and it was closed. that gives them no option but to go to a cash -- check catcher for up to seven years. you want to give these people second chance. >> to find account best for you, follow these three easy steps. first, find a participating bank or credit union.

call 211 or call one of our partner banks or credit unions and ask about the bank on s.f. account. both -- most bridges will have a sign in their window. second, ask about opening an account through bank on s.f.. a financial partner will guide you through this process and connect you with the account that is best for you. third, bring some form of identification. the california id, for an id, or your passport is fine. >> now you have open your account. simple? that is exactly why it was designed. you can access your account online, set up direct deposit, and make transfers. it is a real bank account. >> it is very exciting. we see people opening up second accounts. a lot of these people never had account before. people who have problems with bank accounts, people without two ids, no minimum deposit.

we are excited to have these people. >> it has been a great partnership with bank on s.f. because we are able to offer checking, savings, minimarkets, certificates, and loans to people who might not be about to get accounts anywhere else. even if you have had a previous account at another financial institutions, we can still open an account for you, so you do not need to go to a check cashing place, which may turn to two percent of your monthly income. >> you can enroll in free educational services online. just as it -- visit sfsmartmoney.org. with services like financial education classes and one-on-one meetings with advisers, asset smart money network makes it easy for you to learn all you need to know about managing, saving, investing, and protecting your money.

the network offers access to hundreds of financial aid programs. to help their eruptions, fill out the quick questionnaire, and you will be steered to the program you are looking for. >> who want to make sure everyone has the chance to manage their money successfully, keep their money safe, and avoid getting ripped off. >> it sounds very good. i think people should try that one. >> to find out more, visit sfsmartmoney.org or call 211 and ask about the bank on s.f. program. >> now you can have a bank account. open one today. >> i want to learn more about it. >> social networking and

e-mail. >> i want to know how to use it. ♪ ♪ ♪ >> divisional divide is a divide between those with access to use digital tools and those who don't. >> with young people, having computers and i just don't know. they're doing it fast. so, i want to know. >> not knowing how to navigate the internet or at a loss of what to do. >> we don't have a computer. >> we're a nonprofit that unites organizations and volunteers to transform lies through literacy. our big problem right now is the broadband opportunity program. a federally funded project

through the department of aging. so, we're working in 26 locations. our volunteers are trained to be tutors and trainers, offering everything from basic classes all the way to genealogy and job search. >> to me computers, knowing how to use it. >> i think it's really important to everybody and possibly especially seniors to get enough of these skills to stay in touch. >> it's been fun. with seniors, to get them out of their homes. >> so they can connect with their family members. or their family members. >> [speaking in spanish].

>> so, what we focus on is transferring skills from volunteer to learner to help them get onto facebook, find housing in crisis, be able to connect with friends and family. >> i decided to teach what i learn and it made me want to give back. i discovered that seniors do a lot of review. >> i am a beginner, so, little by little i learn. i learn a lot now. >> if you get the basics, you can learn it. it's simple. it's easy. once you know it. and that's what i want to learn, how to make my life easier and more knowledgeable with the computer.

>> so, what we need right now are more people who speak languages other than english or in addition to english who can give their time during the day and who care deeply ideally about helping to close the divide. >> it's a humbling experience. it's something simple to ask in our daily life, but to someone that doesn't know and to help somebody gain that experience in any way is awesome. >> [speaking in spanish]. >> no matter how tired or cranky or whatever i might feel, when i walk into this place i always walk out feeling great. >> if you feel comfortable using computers and you have patience, we want you on our team. >> would you show me how to type?

>> [speaking in spanish]. >> will you help me learn more? when a resident of san francisco is looking for health care, you look in your neighborhood first. what is closest to you? if you come to a neighborhood health center or a clinic, you then have access it a system of care in the community health network. we are a system of care that was probably based on the family practice model, but it was really clear that there are special populations with special needs.

the cole street clinic is a youth clinic in the heart of the haight ashbury and they target youth. tom woodell takes care of many of the central city residents and they have great expertise in providing services for many of the homeless. potrero hill and southeast health centers are health centers in those particular communities that are family health centers, so they provide health care to patients across the age span. . >> many of our clients are working poor. they pay their taxes. they may run into a rough patch now and then and what we're able to provide is a bridge towards getting them back on their feet. the center averages about 14,000 visits a year in the health clinic alone. one of the areas that we specialize in is family medicine, but the additional

focus of that is is to provide care to women and children. women find out they're pregnant, we talk to them about the importance of getting good prenatal care which takes many visits. we initially will see them for their full physical to determine their base line health, and then enroll them in prenatal care which occurs over the next 9 months. group prenatal care is designed to give women the opportunity to bond during their pregnancy with other women that have similar due dates. our doctors here are family doctors. they are able to help these women deliver their babies at the hospital, at general hospital. we also have the wic program, which is a program that provides food vouchers for our families after they have their children, up to age 5 they are able to receive food vouchers to get milk and cereal for their children. >> it's for the city, not only our clinic, but the city.

we have all our children in san francisco should have insurance now because if they are low income enough, they get medical. if they actually have a little more assets, a little more income, they can get happy family. we do have family who come outside of our neighborhood to come on our clinic. one thing i learn from our clients, no matter how old they are, no matter how little english they know, they know how to get to chinatown, meaning they know how to get to our clinic. 85 percent of our staff is bilingual because we are serving many monolingual chinese patients. they can be child care providers so our clients can go out and work.

>> we found more and more women of child bearing age come down with cancer and they have kids and the kids were having a horrible time and parents were having a horrible time. how do parents tell their kids they may not be here? what we do is provide a place and the material and support and then they figure out their own truth, what it means to them. i see the behavior change in front of my eyes. maybe they have never been able to go out of boundaries, their lives have been so rigid to sort of expressing that makes tremendous changes. because we did what we did, it is now sort of a nationwide model. >> i think you would be surprised if you come to these clinics. many of them i think would be your neighbors if you knew that. often times we just don't discuss that. we treat husband and wife and they bring in their kids or we treat the grandparents and then the next generation. there are people who come in who need treatment for their

heart disease or for their diabetes or their high blood pressure or their cholesterol or their hepatitis b. we actually provide group medical visits and group education classes and meeting people who have similar chronic illnesses as you do really helps you understand that you are not alone in dealing with this. and it validates the experiences that you have and so you learn from each other. >> i think it's very important to try to be in tune with the needs of the community and a lot of our patients have -- a lot of our patients are actually immigrants who have a lot of competing priorities, family issues, child care issues, maybe not being able to find work or finding work and not being insured and health care sometimes isn't the top priority for them. we need to understand that so that we can help them take care

of themselves physically and emotionally to deal with all these other things. they also have to be working through with people living longer and living with more chronic conditions i think we're going to see more patients coming through. >> starting next year, every day 10,000 people will hit the age of 60 until 2020. . >> the needs of the patients that we see at kerr senior center often have to do with the consequences of long standing substance abuse and mental illness, linked to their chronic diseases. heart failure, hypertension, diabetes, cancer, stroke, those kinds of chronic illnesses. when you get them in your 30's and 40's and you have them into your aging process, you are not going to have a comfortable old

age. you are also seeing in terms of epidemics, an increase in alzheimer's and it is going to increase as the population increases. there are quite a few seniors who have mental health problems but they are also, the majority of seniors, who are hard-working, who had minimum wage jobs their whole lives, who paid social security. think about living on $889 a month in the city of san francisco needing to buy medication, one meal a day, hopefully, and health care. if we could provide health care early on we might prevent (inaudible) and people would be less likely to end up in the emergency room with a drastic outcome. we could actually provide prevention and health care to people who had no other way of getting health care, those

without insurance, it might be more cost effective there are so many ways that the internet provides real access to real people and resources and that's what we're try to go accomplish. >> i was interested in technology like video production. it's interesting, you get to create your own work and it reflects what you feel about saying things so it gives perspective on issues. >> we work really hard to develop very in depth content, but if they don't have a venue, they do not have a way to show us, then this work is only staying here inside and nobody knows the brilliance and the amazing work that the students are doing. >> the term has changed over time from a very basic who has a computer and who doesn't have

a computer to now who has access to the internet, especially high speed internet, as well as the skills and the knowledge to use those tools effectively. . >> the city is charged with coming up with digital inclusion. the department of telecommunications put together a 15 member san francisco tech connect task force. we want the digital inclusion program to make sure we address the needs of underserved vulnerable communities, not communities that are already very tech savvy. we are here to provide a, b and c to the seniors. a stands for access. b stands for basic skills and c stands for content. and unless we have all three, the monolingual chinese seniors are never going to be able to use the computer or the internet. >> a lot of the barrier is knowledge. people don't know that these

computers are available to them, plus they don't know what is useful. >> there are so many businesses in the bay area that are constantly retiring their computer equipment that's perfectly good for home use. computers and internet access are helping everybody in the community and people who don't have it can come to us to help with that. one of the biggest problems we see isn't whether people can get computers through programs like ours, but whether they can understand why they need a computer. really the biggest issue we are facing today is helping people understand the value of having a computer. >> immediately they would say can i afford a computer? i don't speak any english. how do i use it. then they will start to learn how to do email or how to go back to chinese newspaper to read all the chinese newspaper. >> a lot of the barrier still is around lack of knowledge or confusion or intimidation and not having people in their peer network who use computers in their lives.

>> the important thing i learned from caminos was to improve myself personally. when i first came to caminos, i didn't know anything about computers. the second thing is i have become -- i have made some great achievements as an individual in my family and in things of the world. >> it's a real issue of self-empowerment where new immigrant families are able to communicate with their families at home, able to receive news and information in their own home language, really become more and more connected with the world as well as connected even inside their local communities. >> if we value the diversity of our city and we value our diverse neighborhoods in the city, we need to ensure that they remain economically viable. equiping them and equiping residents in those areas with jobs that will enable them to stay in san francisco is critical to that.

>> the important thing that i see here at caminos is it helps the low income community, it helps the women who wouldn't have this opportunity otherwise. >> the workers with more education in san francisco are more likely to be able to working that knowledge sector. where they are going to need that familiarity with the internet, they are going to find value with it and use it and be productive with it every day. and half of the city's population that's in the other boat is disconnected from all that potential prosperity. >> we really need to promote content and provide applications that are really relevant to people's lives here. so a lot of the inspiration, especially among the immigrant community, we see is communications with people from their home country but we as much want to use the internet as a tool for people to connect within the local san francisco community. >> i think it's our job as public educators to give them this access and give them this opportunity to see