- Language barriers kept students at Edison High Schools disconnected.
- Faced with a problem, biology teacher Edison Freire created a solution — an after-school club.
- Latino Tech, founded in 1995, enabled high school students to disassemble and repair computers, all the while improving their English language abilities.
- Word of the club spread, and when membership began to include those outside of the Latino community, the club was renamed the Urban Technology Project (UTP).
- Since then, UTP has grown to serve a diverse population of dozens of schools and neighborhoods and hundreds of community members in every region of Philadelphia.
- By providing urban youth with information technology tools and education, UTP promotes ownership of knowledge, problem solving skills and self-reliance, helping its members to reach their potential as civic-minded, service-providing professionals.
- Essential to the success of the program is its structure: long-term, holistic support for urban youth — support that relies on a continuum of service-learning and school-to-work experiences for participants. The program’s nearly two decades of experience working with urban youth and digital inclusion issues serve as a model for organizations working across the country to narrow the digital divide.
E-mail Development Coordinator Jessie Cunningham ([email protected]) to learn more about the history of the Urban Technology Project.
