Hope IT

Hope IT is a Christian-based effort showing God’s love and hope to underserved kids in Pasadena by gaining IT/computer skills.  We do this in a few ways.

• We have courses at no charge on Saturday mornings, in February, June and October.
• Hope IT has a mindset that God’s is the source of gifts — including technology — and our people and partnerships are key to reaching and encouraging kids to learn, gain skills, and see their future positively.  Read more here how we do this.
• See the latest stories and news of what Hope IT has been up to lately.  Sign up to receive our newsletters further below.

Our upcoming course in October 2024 will be our new “AI and Integrity” course again, allowing students to gain familiarity with the ChatGPT and AI prompts, and all the questions surrounding this intriguing topic.  Contact us, or have your student in your organization sign up by clicking here.  Again, there is no charge for our courses.

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Our Hope IT courses are geared for beginners.  We mainly offer our courses in October, February and June.  We meet for 4 Saturday mornings during these courses, and each session is about 2 hours long.  You’ll be amazed how quickly you can learn new skills, and we think you will have fun.  Join us, and sign up for our next course (by contacting your organization or church leader.)

Hope IT course coming up:

Our upcoming course in October 2024 will be our new “AI and Integrity” course again, allowing students to gain familiarity with the ChatGPT and AI prompts, and all the questions surrounding this intriguing topic.  We are altering this course to be just 2 weeks, starting Oct. 26th, and be online.  Sign up by clicking here.  There is no charge for this course.  Reach out if your students are interested, or if you have questions by contacting us.

Hope IT also having a partner-specific course in September and October for high schoolers at the Stars after-school program, on creating Games on Smart Phones.  We taught this course once in Oct. 2019, and will revise this for the 6 week course with Stars.  Look forward to this time!

Courses offered in the past:  

We log the Hope IT courses held in the past here for others to learn from, to assist others to teach students, as well as students to learn from on their own:

• • Intermediate SQL/Database course – March 2024 (remote…this time)
  • WordPress (creating websites) – Feb. 2024 (remote, on-line)
  • Introduction to Data Analysis – January 2024 (remote, on-line)
  • Introduction to Robotics – October 2023
  • Intro to Python: Solve Mazes – June 2023
  • WordPress (creating websites) – February 2023 (remote, on-line)
  • Introduction to Robotics – October 2022 (first in-person course in 2.5 years)
  • Introduction to Data Analysis – February 2022 (remote, on-line)
  • WordPress  (creating websites) – Oct. 2021 (remote, on-line)
  • Introduction to Data Analysis – February 2021 (remote, on-line)
  • WordPress  (creating websites) – Oct. 2020 (remote, on-line)
  • WordPress  (creating websites) – June 2020 (remote, on-line)
  • Intro to CyberSecurity – Cancelled due to COVID19
  • Intro to Python: Solve Mazes – February 2020
  • Create Games on Smart Phones – October 2019
  • Poetry PI: Create Cameras out of Raspberry Pis – February 2019
  • Creating your own Web site using HTML – June 2018

Hope IT also had the privilege to have customized courses with our partners, for only their students.  See the list of the courses below:

• • Robotics – Door of Hope – April 2023
  • Roblox – Stars – 4th and 5th graders – Jan/Feb. 2023
  • WordPress  – Stars – High School group – Jan/Feb 2021
  • WordPress  – Stars – High School group –  Oct/Nov 2020

In September 2021, Hope IT was very grateful to partner with Liberia Renewal Ministries (LRM), offering a Basic Computer Skills course for 15 students in Liberia, Africa.  How do you guide students that never touched a computer before?  What if a Hope IT student taught this course?  That is exactly what happened!

Learn how to type at Typing.com.  It’s always helpful to be better at typing.

Hope IT is a Christian-based effort showing God’s love and hope to underserved kids in Pasadena by gaining IT/computer skills.  We do this by our mindset, our people, and our structure.

Our Mindset:

God loves us: God’s love and hope is most important.  Yes, education and good jobs are nice, but that is not enough.  Knowing this, Hope IT reminds kids that God has been in all of our lives, in our past, right now in our present, and God intends a good future for us.  All of us.  That is an important message for our kids to hear, internalize, and believe that for themselves.  We simply do this by praying before each of our course sessions.  At the end of each session, we have a short Scriptural reflection.  We also send this message in a non-verbal way, making sure our space for our courses is welcoming.  We take care to make sure our students are emotionally and physically safe.  Also, the pace of the topics in our courses are geared for beginners.

Goal: Our goal is for kids in Hope IT, after high school, be able to decide to go straight in to an IT job, or go to college, with a variety of technical, leadership, service skills and experiences. Read our initial ideas; they will evolve as we learn what works best.

Our People:

Kids: Kids coming to Hope IT courses are the underserved.  They usually do not focus on IT topics.  They usually do not interact with professionals in the IT industry.  Kids in Hope IT courses are coming from local churches in Northwest Pasadena, from foster group homes, from organizations serving families experiencing homelessness, from after-school programs, and others.  Hope IT’s aim is to start with kids between the ages of 11 or 13.  The advantage of starting at a young age is give them time to gain skills and confidence.  Over time, as they come to more Hope IT courses, they will gain IT skills and concepts.

Team of Volunteers: All Hope IT team members are volunteers. Most of us have many years of working in the IT industry.  Bringing our knowledge and experiences, we can guide kids to learn and explore, as well as allow them to chart their own path.  Our ratio of team members to kids is more that 1:1.  When we had in-person courses (pre-COVID), we have more Hope IT team members than students at our courses.  Now in COVID, on-line courses, we have a ratio of one or 2 instructors to 4 kids.

Our Structure:

Courses: We have offered a number of courses, at no cost, starting back in 2018.  Hope IT tries to create courses that are fun and introductions to large IT topics.  We have 3 courses per school year, in October, February and June.  Each course is 4 weeks, meeting on Saturday mornings, for usually 2 hours each session.  Our courses have had 3 to 8 students in them.  This is our main approach to allow underserved kids to gain IT and computer skills

Partnership: Hope IT highly values partnerships, with local groups and organizations, be it tutoring programs and churches, or large and small businesses and non-profits.  Kids from a number of partners in the Pasadena area have attend our courses.  Eventually, Hope IT look to create relationships with companies; we hope create opportunities for tours, as well as internships and jobs for kids going through our program.

Knox Support: Hope IT is supported by Knox Presbyterian Church in Pasadena.  We are grateful that Knox provides rooms for our courses, liability insurance for our students and team members, background checks of our team members, and well as financial support.

Bridges: Hope IT gets a lot of support from Bridges.  They are Hope IT’s fiscal sponsor, so we can receive tax-deductible donations, as well as providing us other financial services, like all the details of paying kids for their work in running courses, with all the taxes and worker compensations.  Bridges also provides monthly coaching to help make Hope IT stronger and more effective.  Hope IT was highlighted at Bridges’ 2021 Annual Event.