Challenge
Youth Learning Tech by Helping Small Businesses
By helping youth of color build on their everyday tech skills to train them in website development, we can give youngsters the opportunities they need to find jobs in tech. Teenagers live and breathe the internet – they’re on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Amazon, they use GPS on their smartphones and they blog, making them a perfect fit for the tech industry. Yet, as Hack the Hood CEO Suzan Mernit points out, many young people “think of themselves as consumers of technology but not producers.” They do not realize how valuable their knowledge of the internet can be, and high-salaried careers in IT seem out of reach to them.
Hack the Hood
Hack the Hood has had significant support from Google, Facebook and eBay, and received a $500,000 grant through the Bay Area Impact Challenge.