March 6, 2025
Empowering San Antonio’s underrepresented communities
Google Fiber’s Community Connections program provides gigabit internet service to local nonprofits to help them serve their constituencies and meet their organizational goals. Today, Empower House, the first GFiber Community Connection in San Antonio, shares how access to high-speed internet is helping the nonprofit foster an environment of empowerment and equity for people of all backgrounds.
With rising socio economic challenges in East San Antonio, a diverse group of women founded Martinez Street Women’s Center to improve reproductive health services and create a space for marginalized women and girls to access the necessary resources and education to help them succeed.
Twenty-six years later, with a second location on the southeast side of the city and a third on the west side, we are now called Empower House and have expanded to meet the needs of our diverse community — all through the lens of restorative justice. Through community health, youth programming and advocacy opportunities, we have advanced our collective journey toward justice together with those most impacted by systematic inequity.
Empower House believes in the strength shared information and education offer, and coupled with access to resources, we provide opportunities for the empowerment of our community. We shared that vision with the Esperanza Peace and Justice Center, and in 2017 added a music and talk radio station, KXEP 101.5 FM The Empower House. Hosting six weekly shows and, as a part of the Pacifica Network, KXEP has been a thriving community connector, sharing and amplifying inspiring stories from women of color, LBGTQ+ individuals and other traditionally marginalized communities.
As our radio station continues to be a centerpiece with our community content creation, it was imperative to be innovative in finding solutions to grow the production. We recently built out a radio station and student studio to expand and modernize our space by providing our radio hosts with the necessary resources to strengthen their programming.
The renovation was enabled in part through GFiber’s Community Connections program, which paid for the technology of the new student studio and generously installed 1 Gig network service for free. We are grateful and humbled to be the first recipient of GFiber’s Community Connections program in San Antonio.
Through GFiber’s high-speed connection, we’re able to work quicker and smarter. Our radio studio has produced 14 local radio shows. We also added an on-demand feature on our website and a radio app that makes our programming more accessible on the go. Our online radio visitors continue to increase with current listenership at more than 17,000, who have downloaded more than 900 episodes to date from our website.
With GFiber’s support, we outfitted our Student Studio enabling us to teach students of all ages the skills necessary to harness the technology for storytelling, recording and editing. The voices of the most marginalized amongst us have traditionally been underrepresented in radio and our rich history and culture deserves to be uplifted and highlighted by those of us that live it.
Additionally, GFiber provides 1 Gig service to our Digital Equity Center, which serves as a free WiFi hub for the community, with laptops and printers available for public use.
Today, our extensive programming has served thousands of San Antonians, creating transformative change for future generations of families. And with the support of GFiber, we will continue to carry out our mission for decades to come.
To learn more about our radio programming, please visit https://empowerhousesa.org/radio/.
Posted by Becca Najera, Assistant Director, Empower House SA
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