Community Tech Network and Hamilton Families: Tech Skills Toward Workforce Development
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Community Tech Network • Apr. 16, 2021 • By Sabrina Tam

This month, CTN wrapped up the first round of classes with our new partner Hamilton Families. We are excited to kick off this partnership and look forward to working with them over the next couple of years.

Hamilton Families provides programs to San Francisco families experiencing homelessness, with carefully designed programs to prevent homelessness, provide shelter and stability, return families to permanent housing, and support the well-being of children. As a grantee of the CPUC CASF adoption account, the organization contracted with CTN to train its adult clients on how to navigate the internet. Over the next two years, CTN will train a total of 210 participants.

Our initial round of classes taught both basics and beyond-the-basics courses to 16 participants in English and Spanish. A few key skills we focused on were navigation, cyber safety, word processing, online banking, resume building, and job searching.

While we hope to hold in-person classes when it’s safe, current participants were loaned a laptop or Chromebook to take the courses remotely. Upon completing eight hours of training, participants are able to keep their devices to continue accessing valuable digital resources.

Here’s what Desiree Tejero from Hamilton Families has to say about our partnership: “We are so grateful for having partnered with Community Tech Network to run the instruction for our first Digital Literacy Project at Hamilton Families. Running online cohorts during a pandemic for beginner users is not an easy task, but our partnership made it happen! Our participants are thankful for the skills they learned, and we are excited for future cohorts with you. Thank you, Sabrina, Josie, and Carlos!”

We plan to hold the next round of classes in July, and we look forward to recruiting new participants who want to enhance their digital skills or learn new ones!

Cory Winter