Taah (pronounced Tay-uh) was an unfocused third-grader whose father is in jail. Her mother, Maya, who was 13 when she gave birth to Taah, was told at the time that she probably needed a kidney transplant. Theodora Cox, at 64, faced the added uncertainty of retirement.
Eight months ago, Theodora Cox saw a flier advertising the One Economy program: enroll in an eight-week training course and then have the opportunity to buy a computer for $120 and get broadband for $10 a month. Despite a long-standing fear of computers, the retired social worker dived in.
Taah Cox, 9, works at the computer as her mother, Maya Cox, and grandmother, Theodora Cox, look on. Theodora Cox helped her granddaughter embrace computers and the Internet.
(Barbara L. Johnston For The Washington Post)
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Now Taah "is the technology director in her class," a proud Theodora Cox said. She bickers with her granddaughter about who taught who more about computers. "She's on it every day, and she teaches the other children in the neighborhood."
From their living room, Maya and her mother began research on Maya's kidney disease, corresponding with patients and medical professionals in other countries who often were more responsive than local doctors. And Theodora Cox uses the Internet to help her sell a line of candles to people in the neighborhood.
Ramsey said he came to his idea of one night in early 2000, after sitting through a boring banquet for nonprofits at the Russian Tea Room in New York.
"This is really hideous," Ramsey recalled saying to colleague Ben Hecht about their roles at the Enterprise Foundation, a Washington-based national organization that provides loans and grants to other nonprofit groups to revitalize neighborhoods.
Their jobs were to help get other nonprofits to make better use of the Internet. "I kept saying, 'What about the families?' " Ramsey said.
In the lobby of their hotel that night, the two men stayed up until 2 a.m., hatching their plan on the backs of napkins. Soon, they were working out of a room in the basement of a Washington office building and hunting for start-up money.
A New York venture capital firm helped with a business plan. A few companies donated used computers; some philanthropic groups gave money. But the big break came when Ramsey and Hecht approached Cisco Systems Inc., the Silicon Valley networking giant.
After the tech bubble burst, "they were getting killed and they were laying off people," Ramsey said. "They were looking at us, like, 'Are you guys nuts?' "
