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tv   Fiber to Housing  SFGTV  February 10, 2023 3:15pm-3:31pm PST

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[music] digital literacy is something severely lacking in our world today and it takes a lot to understand that. food water and shelter have basic necessities so long we forget about wifi and connection to the interenet and when you go into communities and realize peep ople are not able to load homework and talk to
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teachers and out of touch with the world. by providing the network and system we are able to allow them to keep up in the modern age. >> folks still were not served by internet throughout the city and tended to be low income people, people in affordable housing. people of color and limited english and seniors, all those are high concentrations in affordable housing, so we thought given that we had a fiber network that stretched throughout the city reaching deep into neighborhoods that would be a perfect opportunity to address it in san francisco. >> the infrastructure the city and star help us run are dejtle programs. it played a critical role from the time we opened during covid till now so we were able to collaborate with online services that offer tutoring and school support. it also helped us be able to
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log the kids on for online school during covid, in addition to like, now that everybody has switched most of their curriculum online we can log kids on to the online homework, check grades in addition to helping parent learn how to use the school system portm >> the office of digital equity our goal fiber to housing is insure we have all three legs of the 3 legged stool. the first leg is high quality internet connection. we liken the high quality internet connection to the highway. the second leg is high quality devices. this is the car. you want to make sure the specks on the car is up to speed and lastly, it is important to get kind of that driver's education to learn how to navigate the road, to know the
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signs to watch out for in terms of making sure you are school while you are surfing the internet it is private so that is the digital literacy piece. >> my daily life i need the internet just to do pretty much everything. the internet has taken so much control over people's daily lives including myself that i just need it to get certain jobs done, i need it for my life. i need it. >> the program really seeks to where ever possible provide a service that's equivalent or higher speed and quality as the best commercial service . >> we serve all of san francisco, but we definitely have to be equitable in our distribution of services. that means everybody gets what they need to be successful. >> actually one of the most gratifying part of my work here at department of technology, it is really bringing city resources to address problems faced with our
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communities with the highest need. >> i think it is important because i grew up in a low income community without internet access and it is hard. i think it is important for everyone to have internet access no matter their income and maybe one day their kid will have internet access for us and help the school and with their skills. dev mission's goal is
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aiming to train young adults, youth so we can be a wealth and disparity in underserved communities like where we are today. my name is leo sosa. i'm the founder and executive director for devmission. we're sitting inside a computer lab where residents come and get support when they give help about how to set up an e-mail account. how to order prescriptions online. create a résumé. we are also now paying attention to provide tech support. we have collaborated with the san francisco mayor's office and the department of technology to implement a broad
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band network for the residents here so they can have free internet access. we have partnered with community technology networks to provide computer classes to the seniors and the residents. so this computer lab becomes a hub for the community to learn how to use technology, but that's the parents and the adults. we have been able to identify what we call a stem date. the acronym is science technology engineering and math. kids should be exposed no matter what type of background or ethnicity or income status. that's where we actually create magic. >> something that the kids are really excited about is science and so the way that we execute that is through making slime. and as fun as it is, it's still a chemical reaction and you start to understand that with the materials that you need to make the slime. >> they love adding their
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little twists to everything. it's just a place for them to experiment and that's really what we want. >> i see. >> really what the excitement behind that is that you're making something. >> logs, legos, sumo box, art, drawing, computers, mine craft, and really it's just awaking opportunity. >> keeping their attention is like one of the biggest challenges that we do have because, you know, they're kids. they always want to be doing something, be helping with something. so we just let them be themselves. we have our set of rules in place that we have that we want them to follow and live up to. and we also have our set of expectations that we want them to achieve. this is like my first year officially working with kids. and definitely i've had moments where they're not getting something. they don't really understand it and you're trying to just talk to them in a way that they can make it work teaching them in
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different ways how they can get the light bulb to go off and i've seen it first-hand and it makes me so happy when it does go off because it's like, wow, i helped them understand this concept. >> i love playing games and i love having fun with my friends playing dodge ball and a lot of things that i like. it's really cool. >> they don't give you a lot of cheese to put on there, do they? you've got like a little bit left. >> we learn programming to make them work. we do computers and programming. at the bottom here, we talk to
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them and we press these buttons to make it go. and this is to turn it off. and this is to make it control on its own. if you press this twice, it can do any type of tricks. like you can move it like this and it moves. it actually can go like this. >> like, wow, they're just absorbing everything. so it definitely is a wholehearted moment that i love experiencing. >> the realities right now, 5.3 latinos working in tech and about 6.7 african americans working in tech. and, of course, those tech companies are funders. so i continue to work really hard with them to close that gap and work with the san francisco unified school district so juniors and seniors
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come to our program, so kids come to our stem hub and be exposed to all those things. it's a big challenge. >> we have a couple of other providers here on site, but we've all just been trying to work together and let the kids move around from each department. some kids are comfortable with their admission, but if they want to jump in with city of dreams or hunter's point, we just try to collaborate to provide the best opportunity in the community. >> devmission has provided services on westbrook. they teach you how to code. how to build their own mini robot to providing access for the youth to partnerships with adobe and sony and google and twitter. and so devmission has definitely brought access for our families to resources that our residents may or may not
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have been able to access in the past. >> the san francisco house and development corporation gave us the grant to implement this program. it hasn't been easy, but we have been able to see now some of the success stories of some of those kids that have been able to take the opportunity and continue to grow within their education and eventually become a very successful citizen. >> so the computer lab, they're doing the backpacks. i don't know if you're going to be able to do the class. you still want to try? . yeah. go for it. >> we have a young man by the name of ivan mello. he came here two and a half years ago to be part of our digital arts music lab. graduating with natural, fruity loops, rhymes. all of our music lyrics are clean. he came as an intern, and now
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he's running the program. that just tells you, we are only creating opportunities and there's a young man by the name of eduardo ramirez. he tells the barber, what's that flyer? and he says it's a program that teaches you computers and art. and i still remember the day he walked in there with a baseball cap, full of tattoos. nice clean hair cut. i want to learn how to use computers. graduated from the program and he wanted to work in i.t.. well, eduardo is a dreamer. right. so trying to find him a job in the tech industry was very challenging, but that didn't stop him. through the effort of the office of economic work force and the grant i reached out to a few folks i know.
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post mates decided to bring him on board regardless of his legal status. he ended his internship at post mates and now is at hudacity. that is the power of what technology does for young people that want to become part of the tech industry. what we've been doing, it's very innovative. helping kids k-12, transitional age youth, families, parents, communities, understand and to be exposed to stem subjects. imagine if that mission one day can be in every affordable housing community. the opportunities that we would create and that's what i'm trying to do with this
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>> well, thank you for your patience. usually i'm always most low on time. so i appreciate you waiting. i'm san francisco mir london breed and welcome the brown bombers