computer mentors reaches out to academy prep
The Computer Mentors office on Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard in East Tampa will be especially busy Saturday as staff and volunteers give away 100 computers to youngsters who attend Academy Prep Center in Ybor City.
It’s a heartwarming story of one inspirational volunteer effort helping another that relies heavily on public support.
I wrote about Computer Mentors on Sticks of Fire a few weeks back. If you’re not familiar with Academy Prep, take a gander at the website.
It’s a school making a difference in a community in which success is certainly not guaranteed.
The Ybor campus has been open since 2003. The original school in St. Petersburg is now ten years old. All students at each school receive tuition-free, college-prep education from 5th through 8th grade. The kids thrive.
It’s a grueling program demanding involvement up to 11 hours a day, six days a week, 11 months a year. The academic curriculum is tough, but the kids are also provided with emotional support, social guidance and many extra-curricula activities.
Once they graduate from the 8th grade, the support doesn’t stop. For the next eight years, through high school and college, Academy Prep continues to offer guidance and help.
And yes, they are expected to go to college.
The computers the kids at the Ybor Campus will get Saturday will go a long way toward ensuring their academic success.
The give-away is a collaborative effort by Computer Mentors and Microsoft.
Tags: non-profit, tampa, ybor
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September 15th, 2007 at 8:55 pm
There’s a reason Judy Hill isn’t with a newspaper anymore. It’s because her writing is irrelavent. Even for the Web.