Last Saturday, I spent the day with URBAN Teens eXploring Technology (URBAN TxT), a revolutionary nonprofit in South Los Angeles that I've been volunteering with since April. URBAN TxT uses coding as a leadership development tool, and more importantly, encourages and inspires young men of color to be role models and catalysts of change in their communities.
Over the summer, I served as a coach for URBAN TxT's coding academy. For this event, I enlisted Arion, one of NationBuilder's best developers, to help me introduce the kids to our Community Organizing System, and to teach their parents some basic HTML skills.
I spent the first part of the session explaining the core components of NationBuilder. Then I challenged the teens to build out some basic website elements in less than 30 minutes using NationBuilder. Since most of the guys learned basic HTML over the summer, the task for Arion and the other URBAN TxT coaches was to teach basic HTML to the parents, many of whom are not intimately familiar with computer technology.
Arion took the lead in covering the concepts and then walked the parents through building a simple HTML website. Oscar Menjivar, URBAN TxT founder, translated for Arion since most of the parents speak only Spanish or are Spanish-dominant. The teens in the room were tasked with facilitating the process and working very closely with their parents.
After the session, Arion noted how important the support of parents is to the kids' success learning tech. "It was great to show the parents that their kids aren't just playing around on the computer. Now that they've seen firsthand that the kids are learning a highly-demanded skill that will put them on a path for success, they are much more likely to be fully supportive every day at home."
It was exhilarating and inspiring to see a classroom at the University of Southern California filled with Latino and African American families learning computer programming together – kids teaching parents, and tech professionals working together while using technology as the vehicle to unite communities.