Located at the East End of Houston, TX is a place people call Pecan Park. If you look above the cars and notice the trees canopying most streets, you will understand why. The local high school is among the oldest in this coastal city. In the south end of Pecan Park, an apartment complex supports over 8,000 area residents, who are the poor of this already poor metro neighborhood. The per capita income of all residents in this community was last taken at $10,326. On the Westside is a local community college, and to the East a Community Technology Center, known as Technology for All (TFA). It is here, that I have made my home this past year.
My title is Community Network Assistant. I work in the division known as TFA-Wireless. In conjunction with a graduate student from Rice University, I administer, maintain, and expand the center’s wireless Internet project. He oversees the research side, while I insure our users are satisfied. This task has its ups and downs.
But my department is only a small part of Technology for All’s mission. The center provides a public computer lab, open to anyone. It is a place where kids can congregate once school is over. Our lab gives them a chance to socialize and study, while having adults around to supervise. The alternative hangout is the parking lot in front of a liquor store, and I believe that the Internet, even with its recent bad reputation, is an improvement over the streets. And now, we will be able to include a greater number and range of kids, thanks to the C4All Access Now Award, recently given to Technology for All. The grant went towards upgrading the lab for items that kids with disabilities can use to access the computer’s programs and Internet, like buying head phones and getting much needed technical support.
The original role of our organization was to refurbish donated computers and distribute them back into the community. That mission continues today. We receive bulk donations from corporations wishing to cast off their outdated PCs and recycle their parts to make working machines. We replace power supplies, fix fans, and diagnose any other problems found with the hardware. This happens in a place we call the ghosting room, which also serves as my office. On some days more than 200 CPUs make their home along the ghosting room’s walls, fighting for space with scanners, printers, monitors, and mesh networking equipment.
Hardware is only valuable if people have the knowledge to use it. For this purpose we offer classes on computer education. In our Learn and Earn program, high school students earn a computer by showing their understanding of how a computer works and how to operate one safely. They learn about spyware, viruses, and the many things one can do with Windows.
I see TFA as a modern-day information Casablanca, but without the Nazis. It is a haven for people seeking to better their situation through technology and education. A Microsoft associate shares the same hallway with a transplanted immigrant trying to learn English. High school kids work on their class project across from adults studying for their GED. A parent who has never owned her own computer asks me questions about the internet we provide for the community. I ask her to point out on a huge satellite map where her house is, so I can tell her if she is under our wireless cloud. I see that she lives less than a block from the antenna we put on the nearby library, and I start preparing a wireless adapter for her to carry home.
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