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Teenage boys, especially low-income ones, are often typecast as problematic regardless of race. Although the problems facing low-income young men are great, Oscar Menjivar and the people at UrbanTxT are seeking to change this by teaching these young men how to code and work with technology.

Rather than allowing these boys to fall for the temptation allure of gang life or an apathy toward education, Menjivar’s team has established a program which gives boys a chance to learn valuable technology skills and teamwork, while encouraging them to earn good grades in school, and to advance as strong, career-minded men with college aspirations in technology.

UrbanTxT has a very small demographic at the moment, teenage boys in the Watts area of Los Angeles. This, along with Compton, and Inglewood are notable for being some of the poorest communities in the LA area — it’s also where Oscar Menjivar grew up. While living in Watts, he noticed some trends among many of his high school guy friends: many did not graduate high school. Some joined gangs, others got jobs. He was one of the few who made it to college, where he majored in computer science. When he returned to his neighborhoood a few years later, he noticed that things hadn’t changed much. This was how UrbanTxt was born.

To try to change the path of the next generation teenage boys from going down the same path as his friends, Menjivar began a program with two goals: Give students valuable skills in the programming field while providing motivation to progress through high school and onward, as well as to teach trust and teamwork — a skill crucial in the academic, corporate, and technology fields.

The 15-week program begins with the first week being spent entirely on team building and communication, a skill which Menjivar says many of these boys lack. They emphasize professional treatment and teaching them how to trust and work with one another. The teams the boys grow into will then be kept together when they go onto the tech aspect of the program.

Each team member is given different tasks, with the goal of creating a website that sells some sort of product. The team is broken up into project manager, graphic designer, developer, and programmer. The programming languages the boys learn are CSS, HTML5, Javascript, and PHP. Languages essential to building the websites used by everyone on the net.

The teams are all taught coding in a professional environment: the computer labs on USC’s campus. Not only do they have access to a professional atmosphere, but they begin to “feel like college students themselves,” Menjivar told Más Wired. This professional atmosphere serves as motivation as well, since there also is the prize at the end of the 15 week program — one of the boys will be chosen to visit Google’s headquarters.

Menjivar’s program has, so far, been successful in his eyes. He reports that 70% of the students in the program go on to computer engineering degrees — and 100% of the students were retained. Failing students have made an upswing in academic performance and are going on to college, and some are even coming back to the program to help teach courses after they graduate. They are able to keep touch with alumni of the program through an internal social network.

Not surprisingly, Menjivar’s program has growth aspirations. He wants to expand limited geographical region of the program to create similar programs in cities like New York, Chicago, and likely in the state of Texas. He is also trying to provide the students with college credits for completing the program.

To learn more about UrbanTxT visit their website here.

About Elaine Rita Mendus (50 Posts)

Elaine Rita Mendus is a undergraduate student working on graduating college (someday soon). Her career interests include geopolitics, the Hispanic community, and urban planning. She really wouldn't mind ending up a scriptwriter though...