Hope IT is grateful to God for new opportunities.  We are really expanding: here are a few highlights.  With this expansion, we are now in need of financial support.  This is the first time we are asking for financial assistance to support this expansion.

Hope IT is grateful to have 2 courses completed last month, and one course starting in April:

• • 2 students from the Door of Hope finished the WordPress course, creating web sites.
    • They learned how to add pictures, links, videos, and create a blog.
    • They also learned about PlugIns, the key idea to WordPress.  This allows you to quickly add features to track who visits your website, quickly build web pages, optimize your website appearing in Google searches, and much more.

• • Hope IT finished the Roblox courses with 4th and 5th graders at Stars.
    • This was a 6 week course, meeting on Thursday afternoon.
    • The kids learned how games they love are created on the platform.  The kids also created a small game (created a script), and then program – creating a script – where a player runs an obstacle course with dangerous obstacles.  This included changes in lighting over the course of the day.
    • The Hope IT was stretched as well, as this was one of the few times the students outnumbered the Hope IT team during a course.  These were also the youngest students we taught programming to.
    • One student published his game to his Roblox account, and play the game on his phone.  It was a small triumph, especially given the impact it had on the other kids watching.  We are considering adding this to future classes.

• • Hope IT partnering with the Door of Hope for an upcoming Robotic course
    • We are hoping 6 students, from ages 13 and up will join in.
    • This course will be in April, on 4 Saturday mornings.
    • Our 2 students from the October course will assist…and get paid doing so.
    • The Hope IT team is growing, and we may have new Hope IT team members join in…including possibly 2 high school students.

Hope IT’s efforts are expanding…with expanding costs:

• • We are expanding our courses offered.  We usually offer 3 courses per year.  This year, we may have 5.
  • We have more students in our courses.  This means we need more laptops and mice.
  • If our plans go well, we will have 2 Robotics courses this year.  We are gladly giving the Robotic kits away to the students after the course.  With the Robotic kits cost $30 each, you can see this can begin to add up.
  • We are beginning to reward students that have gained skill, in paying them to help assist in our courses.
  • We look eagerly towards our paid internship for one student coming up in April with Bridges.  This is a 4 week internship, at $16 per hour, for 5 hours per week.  The total is $400.  Through Bridges, we are paying this student via a work permit.  This one student will fill out an internship application, go through a Hope IT interview, and meet with the Hope IT team weekly, to make sure challenges at the workplace do not overwhelm the student.

Hope IT is looking to gain more funding.  Please consider donating money. 

• • We have an ambitious plan for the rest of this school year, as well as next school year with more plans of expansion (stay tuned).
  • As you know and as listed above, there are costs involved.
  • We are buying laptops, Robotic kits, and paying our older kids in the internship program, and assisting in courses.
  • We need to raise $1,000 more than our current budget has.
  • If you like to donate to Hope IT to help us accomplish all these efforts, continue reading below.  We show the steps to donate from our website.
  • Your assistance will directly allow kids to gain computer/IT skills, either to acquire more equipment (laptops and Robotic kits), or to pay key students themselves, as they assist in courses and the internship.

We love to see this growth.  It brings a different kind of challenge.  Bless you for your prayers, and considering financially supporting Hope IT.

What we are firm about is the love of God, and God’s emphasis on caring for those on the margins.  Hope IT is so blessed to work with our partners, and especially, with the students that come to Hope IT courses.

God bless.

Gratefully,
–Mike Veerman
Hope IT team lead

Here’s how to donate from the Hope IT website:

Go to our “Donate” web page at this link:  https://hopeit.net/donate/

Click the “Donate” button, see the green arrow below.

You will be forwarded to the Bridges’ DonorPerfect donation web page.  Bridges is Hope IT’s fiscal sponsor.  You can give a one-time gift, or set up monthly giving.

• • Click the default amount, or use the “Other” button to enter an amount you prefer.
  • The key point is to select “Ministry of Hope IT” in the Choose Ministry drop down, see the 2nd green arrow below.
  • Click the “Next” button.

Fill in your personal information (see below), and click the “Next” button at the bottom.

You can donate using your credit card or directly from your bank account.  We show both options below, using the “Payment Option” drop down, see the green arrows below.  You can also select to cover the small transaction fee, or now.  When you are finished, click the “Submit Payment” button at the bottom.

You will receive an email from Bridges, thanking you for your donation.  Please keep this donation email for you tax purposes.  Hope IT thanks you for your donation!!  Thank you for your partnership in allowing underserved students gain computer/IT skill, confidence, and glimpse of God’s love.

Hope IT – New Year, New efforts

Happy New Year!! Hope IT has welcomed the new year, starting quickly and has many plans for the rest of this school year.  Also, this is the 7th year for Hope IT. We thank God.

Hope IT has started a 6 week Roblox game creation course with 10 students at Star’s after-school program.  Here are the highlights:

• 4th and 5th grades on Thursday afternoons are learning how to create games in Roblox (see the picture above).
• Students are learning the key concepts of Building and Scripting in Roblox Studio (see a screen shot below of the tool the students are using.)
• Roblox uses the Lua programming language, which is somewhat like Python.  This introduces students to computer aided design and script language programming to automate the game objects.
• There is so much excitement, that the 2nd and 3rd graders are wondering when their turn will be.  (We are still evaluating what is the youngest reasonable age for a class.)
• Truth be told: it requires effort, and stretching oneself to take in the new concepts and skills.  It can also be frustrating. This is especially so because of the school time lost because of the covid epidemic.  Students are much less accustomed to classroom behavior.
• This is the most students Hope IT has ever had in a course.
• Even us instructors are challenged to keep the 10 students moving forward, and remain encouraged and positive.  We are learning a lot as well, especially in the proper framing of the material. We are also learning about classroom discipline, with the help from Stars staff, who have had training in teaching, child development, and counseling.
• Roblox is a great transitional play and work space to allow young kids to use their current enjoyment and knowledge (playing games), and learn computer aided design (CAD) and programming concepts that can help them in the future.

Coming up quickly, Hope IT will start our WordPress website creation course in February.  Here are the key points.

• WordPress is a good skill to learn, as more than 30% of all websites use WordPress.  There are actual jobs looking for people with WordPress experience.
• WordPress does not require programming.  Kids can definitely learn this skill.
• The main concepts in WordPress are Themes and Plugins.  There are so many of those, students will learn how to share information (text, pictures and videos), sell products, optimize web pages for Internet searches (SEO), and see the traffic of guests to your website, and more.
• A paid internship for one student follows this course.  Hope IT will look to have one of our students apply and interview for this internship.  Our partner Bridges is looking for one student to help with their website work in WordPress.  This is a skill in demand with a large market.

God is creative, and brings a spirit of newness.  We are looking forward to how this new year progresses.  God bless.

Gratefully,
–Mike Veerman
Hope IT team lead

Hope IT is grateful for 2 students and our partners, for successfully completing our Introduction to Robotics course.

After reconnecting with our partners, we had 2 students from the Door of Hope to attend our Robotics course in October. Here are a few highlights:

• Each week, we saw the students learn.
• They wired different circuits.
  • That meant doing simple things like lighting up an LED, and then making it blink. This was used to teach the basics of electronic circuits, power, and powered devices.
  • Students added a resistor, and understood the difference between 3.3 volts and 5 volts devices and using resistors to integrate devices requiring different voltages.
  • The following week, they made a robotic arm move to specified locations at specified times. The arm was controlled by a servo motor. Computer control of physical motion was discussed.
  • On the last week, they added an ultrasonic sensor to detect objects 10 centimeters away, and if so, raise the arm…like a parking arm we use all the time to enter a parking lot, and lower it when the car has passed. They did it themselves, and oh, that was fun to see it work. This demonstrated integration of sensors, logic, and mechanical devices using closed loop control.
• And some math involved! We covered angles, speed of sound, and calculating distance. This is a reminder to students to keep up with math, as its so connected to computer skills. The Hope IT team just smiles.

It was intriguing to also visit the Harvest Festival at the Door of Hope before Halloween, and have a table for Hope IT, showing other kids what they can learn. Our 2 students came by the table, and put together the circuits, going through each of the set ups they learned. It was a relaxed, unstructured, fun environment, and an opportunity to reinforce what they learned. One of the students had their mom there watching…and taking pictures. We are all proud of them.

For these students, Hope IT will have a bonus one-day session, in early December, creating ornaments of LED lights, soldering them permanently.

Hope IT is grateful to God for the 2 partners (below) that help Hope IT in the background. We could not serve kids without these 2 key partners. We are thankful for them.

• Knox Presbyterian Church provides us funds – to buy the laptops and the Robotics kits – as well as the great room (see the pictures) to learn and be together.
• Bridges provides Hope IT with coaching to communicate better to partners and supporters, and the fiscal sponsorship to both receive donations, get reimbursed on expenses, and even have an opportunity to pay kids to help teach other kids (via work permit).

Here’s a quick overview of courses coming up.

• Working with Stars, we are tentatively setting up a Roblox course for 4th and 5th graders for January and February.
• In February, Hope IT will have a Saturday morning course on WordPress again. This will be an on-line course, to prevent COVID spread, that usually occurs more in winter.
• We are optimistic for partners with the Door of Hope to have an April Robotics course, and possibly have our 2 students that just took the course, help as assistants. We really look forward to that prospect.

Hope IT is grateful for your support and prayers, our team, our students, and our partners. We see students begin to view their future more positively, and we all see God’s love more. Absolutely why we are doing all this.

God bless, and have a good, spirit-filled Thanksgiving.

Gratefully,
–Mike Veerman
Hope IT team lead

The past couple of months has been challenging for Hope IT. COVID makes it difficult to maintain contact with kids and volunteers, and Zoom, while a great tool, is not the same as meeting in person.

We had a Roblox course planned and ready for June. It’s a fun course for creating games, which are popular with young kids today. It allows students to learn how to create the games and do some programming as well. (See 2 screen shots of what creating a game in Roblox looks like below.) We intended this to be an in-person course. We took a chance when Covid was at a low, but got no sign ups. There are also challenges with our partner organizations. We will continue to try.

Underserved kids need extra help to transition to the job market. Few of them can avail themselves of “take your child to work day” to see what the work world is actually like, which in turn results in a serious case of culture shock when they are first exposed to it.

To help with this, we look for internship opportunities and found one at Bridges, one of our partner organizations. This opportunity was for WordPress (web sites) remote work, and paid $16/hour for up to 4 weeks. After a lot of searching for applicants, we found a 16 year old in a foster group home. He was very successful in our WordPress course. He filled out an application and went through an interview with Hope IT. We talked about overcoming challenges, maintaining trust, and how to solve problems. We were all set. Except, when it was time to start the internship, we could not reach our student. After 3 weeks, we finally talked again – mind you, all on-line – and the student finally decided not to pursue the internship. We intend to review this with some youth leaders (more about this below.) We will learn and try again.

We are also planning to talk directly to youth leaders. We will have a lunch gathering in September. One topic we plan to discuss is how to maintain the relationship with the students and keep enthusiasm alive. As I have heard, Hope IT is not the only group seeing youth decline when opportunities arise. We think this time will help us work together going forward. It’s a time for the youth leaders to see what a job in the IT industry can bring to a student. We have to figure out how to sustain the students’ motivation and ease the transitions. We are confident we can do this, but we will have to work hard to make it easy for the kids. This is not trivial.

Our next course is also intended to be in-person…learning the basics in Robotics. (See a preview picture of the Robotics kits below). We love it. I hope the students do as well.

We will give you another update in the Fall.

We know our God does not quit. We are motivated by what Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 13, “Love bears all things, believe all things, hopes all things, endures all things.” We will continue to learn, and try better efforts. Our students can overcome these challenges.

Blessings,
–Mike Veerman
Hope IT team lead