Oakland's Hack the Hood Graduation Recap

​On August 14, 2014 Oakland’s Hack The Hood celebrated the conclusion of a six-week summer program for 23 young people who all learned how to create websites for local businesses as a way to begin to train for tech careers.
The graduation ceremony was held in Oakland’s uptown neighborhood, in the new Impact HUB Oakland building. On the screen behind the stage, images of websites for local businesses were shown. 

The free promotion wasn’t about the locally owned shoe store, nor about the small business that specializes in dessert making as much as it was about the creators of the websites.

People like Arletha Grayson, a 17 year old mother who recently graduated high school. And Teresa Flores, a student at a college in Southern California and a daughter to a hardworking mother who immigrated to the United States. These are just two of the individuals who've gained an expertise in web design this summer.

Hack The Hood is a technical training program, birthed out of the collaboration of a number of community organizations (Center for Media Change/ Oakland Local, HUB Oakland, United Roots), and backed with funding from Google and many other funders, including The City of Oakland.   

This is the second year for the organization, which runs a summer boot camp focused on Oakland youth.  Many of the young people, ages 16-20, are guided to Hack The Hood by organizations known for working with youth; College Track, Youth Uprising, United Way and Lao Family Community Development, to name a few. 

This summer, the young people worked in the program five days a week, 9-5 everyday except for Friday—when they were dismissed at 2pm.

Work consisted of learning the Weebly web design platform and creating websites that fit local business owner’s desires and needs. Every once in a while—work consisted of getting out of the office for on-site visits to Google, Facebook and Weebly.

“We’re not taking them there to kick it,” said Damon Packwood, Program Manager for Hack The Hood.  “We want them to understand what the industry is like, and make assessments.”. 

Packwood continued to say that students were instructed to ask themselves critical questions during these research trips:  “What is this company like? Could you work there? Or, if you could make something of your own?”

Packwood, one of four instructional staff members, worked alongside a team of tech-savvy volunteer mentors to aide the young people’s advancement into the world of technology development. 

“Technology is re-conceptualizing culture,” said Packwood. He made it a point to stress this to the young people, many of them who came from “disadvantaged backgrounds,” be it financial hurdles, broken homes or parents who recently immigrated and struggle with language barriers.   

“There’s a significant part of culture that isn't being re-conceptualized,” Packwood said, highlighting the young members of Hack The Hood’s graduating class as valuable, because of their cultural ties, energy and talent.

At the graduation ceremony, before students were honored for their expertise in web development, they enjoyed finger foods and light refreshments near the main stage of HUB Oakland’s building. A handful of students gave speeches about their personal paths, while others shared an overview of what Hack The Hood was all about.

The event concluded with a group photo. As the students postured themselves on stage, the projected images of their websites were no longer displayed on a white wall; instead the light was now shown across their smiling faces. 

For  more info on ongoing programs, or to sign up or volunteer: info@hackthehood.org, http://hackthehood.org
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