Community TechServe

Community TechServe is an academically based service learning and leadership program dedicated to closing digital and other social divides through educational partnerships and public-private ventures. Community TechServe is a partnership of the Robert A. Fox Leadership Program, the Center for Community Partnerships at the University of Pennsylvania and LaSalle College High School.
Nationally, millions of American adults, teenagers, and school-age children can’t read well or even at all. The country’s illiteracy problem is especially acute in our big cities. Philadelphia is no exception, and the human and financial toll is enormous and growing. Numerous social science studies suggest that low-income urban children, youth, and families without basic reading and learning skills are far more likely to suffer other social ills—educational failure, truancy, and extreme school drop out rates; high juvenile crime, delinquency, arrest, and incarceration rates; high levels of domestic abuse, street violence, and other criminal victimizations; chronic joblessness and long-term dependence on public assistance (welfare); non-marital teenage pregnancies and family break-up; inadequate housing and homelessness; and many others.

What’s the Internet?

That’s a question many inner-city children as old as twelve still ask. Some predicted that the high-tech revolution of the last quarter-century would close the educational and other socioeconomic gaps between low-income urban citizens, and the middle- and upper-middle class suburban families. But just the opposite has happened. Rather than close the gap, there is now a well-documented digital divide between “us” and “them.” A half-century ago, a poor child living in North Central Philadelphia or South Central Los Angeles could still land a decent, living-wage job without much formal education. A quarter-century ago, such a child could still succeed, but generally not without a high school diploma or equivalent educational certification. Today, it is virtually impossible for truly disadvantaged inner-city children, youth, and young adults to compete for economic opportunities or otherwise make it in America without a good K-12 education that includes computers and computer-assisted learning.

What can we do?

The mission of Community TechServe is to help close digital and other social divides in the metropolitan Philadelphia region through educational partnerships and religious-secular and public-private ventures.We are starting small but thinking big—very big!
If our only program goal were to “tech and train, work and wire” assorted schools or other inner-city sites, we could just as well raise funds and hire one or more professional firms that specialize in IT services to do the work.

No drive-by charity

But our program goals reach much deeper and run far wider. Yes, our primary objective is to capably and reliably tech-serve as many sites as possible, and to continue to tech-serve these sites and others we may add in the years ahead. Can we do a truly excellent job? Can we learn from the experience and refine the tech-serve model? Can we figure out real ways of remaining on tap to trouble-shoot and strengthen the sites over the next year and beyond?
They—the people of each school, the wider communities, the persons and foundations potentially interested in supporting, sustaining, and expanding the program in the years ahead, and others—shall know us by our works.

Community TechServe is a Partnership Between: