My Journey with Dev/Mission: Year Three!

This Week marks my third year anniversary when I left my job back to start/launch my own non-profit Dev/Mission which aims to train young adults for careers in the tech industry.

Our journey started @ Uber Headquarters back in January 2017 where we were housed by 3 months running our open lab coding sessions collaborating with many Uber Engineers that helped former alumni from other programs I founded in SF to start developing our coding program model. I want to thank Kurtis Nusbaum and Luis Madrigal and other Uber Employees that believed in what were doing back then. Since that time Uber has provided many opportunities for our young people through corporate site visits, mentors, computer donations, grants but most importantly their support in our journey. More to Come!!!!

Mission Housing Development Corporation Executive Director Sam Moss and now Deputy Director Marcia Contreras took me by their wing during our 1st year by believing in the idea; and I am so appreciative to both of them as they help me launch my organization and house our program operations inside Valencia Gardens @ 360 Valencia where we currently operate today with a lease from MHDC since June 2019.

When I started this organization I saved my money from my last paycheck which lasted us for two months. Three years later we have received funding from Autodesk, The Latino Community Foundation, Google.org, Uber, Microsoft, AT&T, PayPal, IBM, The Office of Economic and Workforce Development of SF (TechSF), the Mayor's Office of Housing and Community Development, Twitter, Microsoft, AT&T, WorkDay, PayPal, The Bothin Foundation, The Miranda Lux Foundation just to name a few.

We have also received support from personal donors tons and computer donations from the University of San Francisco, Dropbox, Uber, JonesIT, Twitter for Good that are being awarded to the participants graduating from our program and the families we serve.

Last year we were selected as the only San Francisco Non Profit for the Latino Community Foundation Accelerator Program which helped us enable our newest website, branding, marketing, fundraising strategies and our one pager with unrestricted funds. Big Shout Out to Masha Chernyak for making this happen; she believed in my idea to start Dev/Mission 3 1/2 years ago.

We hosted our summer 2017 inaugural session with 20 young adults from the Bay Area; 50% of them were women and 80% of them got connected to careers in the tech industry to CS Degrees and Employment Pathways.

Our bread and butter 12-Week Pre Apprenticeship Occupational ICT Skills Training continues to be very successful by connecting TAY ages 16-24 from SF and beyond to our Intensive Bootcamp. This program is currently being funded by the Office of Economic Workforce Development (TechSF) for three years and other grants. More than 130 young people have enrolled in this program and we have a 80% graduation rate with over 50 graduates working in tech jobs and over 40 pursuing CS Degrees in many community colleges and universities. We have launched our "Tech Wizard" Mentorship program so every graduate gets paired with a mentor for six months developing and enhancing their career paths into tech. All of our graduates receive a $500 stipend, a laptop and mentor to guide them which path they would like to follow as well. Video

We have over 146 enrollments, with over 117 graduates; our participant population is 45% girls, 100% come from very low income households, and over 35% of our students come from outside San Francisco, 75 of our enrollments have been High School Students. Check out Ethnicity Chart to see the young people that we have served with our Pre-Apprenticeship OST ICT Program:

We have placed over 50 graduates from our program in many tech sector positions earning between $18.00 - $30.00 dollars per hour; also we have connected more than 40% of our graduates to CS Degrees with some of them earning scholarships as part of our Dev/Mission CS Scholarship Program.

We have also launched two continuation tracks for our graduates: A six month fellowship for our Full Stack Development Track (Jr Developer) and our six month Community Technology Associate (Which provides tech support to low income families) after these tracks some alumni get to be hired by Dev/Mission as Contractors to support our programs on the ground.

We just completed our second Dev/Mission Uber Coding Fellowship Program in partnership with Uber Open Source. The Dev/Mission Fellowship provides bootcamp graduates the opportunity to further their training and experience with web development in partnership with the volunteer Code for San Francisco brigade. Over the course of the past 6 months, fellows build upon their bootcamp experience in HTML, CSS, and JavaScript to learn full-stack web development with Node.Js. At the same time, they gain hands-on experience with user-centered product research and design by investigating local community needs with guidance from members of Code for SF. At the end of the program, fellows present working prototypes of web applications developed to address the community needs they researched. Project

We have refurbished over 1,000 computers for non profits and low income families with our Community Technology Associate Program since 2017 and have provided over 1,000 hours of service learning opportunities with our graduates. We launched our Community Technology Associate Program in partnership with the Mayor's Office or Housing and Community Development and Alexander Banh back in 2019. Our 2019-20120 goal is to distribute over 300 computers by June 2020.

We just completed our 1st Google IT Certification Coursera Pilot Program thanks to a grant from Google.org and 4 out of 10 alumni have earned an IT Google Certification. The remaining 6 are in the process of earning their certification as well. We are in the works for our second cohort staring by April.

We have also launched our 1st Dev/Mission Chapter program in Yakima Valley since the summer of 2018 with over 20 young people completed our summer program model in partnership with OIC of Washington County and Youth Build. Video

We started serving K-12 Kids/Youth in the Bayview Hunters Point West back in the summer of 2018 thanks to a grant from Microsoft and Scott Mauvais. Right after that pilot we have launched last year a $500,000 program funded by the San Francisco Housing Development Corporation thanks to David Sobel Mike Yoshioka & Taylor Booker for the next three years to implement STEAM Programs in the Bayview Hunters Point West/East/Westbrook. We have two STEAM Hubs @ 1030 Oakdale Avenue and 3 Harbor Road. We have more than 100 kids/youth K-12 come to explore with STEAM Activities. Video

Out of this STEAM grant we have also launched our Digital Arts Music Lab Program as well where youth ages 14-21 come and create music, write their own lyrics, learn how to use Production Software like Fruity Loops, mix, master and record their own music as well perform under Adobe DJ Club Sponsorship and Leadership from Gary Bizer from iHeart Radio and KMEL. Video

All of the above program would not be have been possible with the help from the tech industry volunteers, the social impact, corporate responsibility divisions and the wonderful ERG's that have continue to believe in our talent and help them prepare for their near future. To date over 150 volunteers have signed up since we started the organization as tech mentors; TA's; marketing; outreach and other volunteer roles that we have created for them.

As the COVID pandemic spread worldwide, we had to move our Pre-Apprenticeship program remotely and adopt a distance learning model. Our biggest challenge was not just having to adjust our curriculum to fit the distance learning model, but also to help our students adapt to this new way of learning as most of them had either never taken an online class, or tried it once and were not successful in doing so and dropped the class. Some students also experienced other hardships during this transition period such as a death in the family, having to relocate temporarily outside of SF and family members being diagnosed positive for COVID-19. Throughout these trying times we have supported the students as much as possible by keeping constant communication with them both in and outside of class hours. The students have been meeting individually on a rotating basis for an hour with the instructor outside of regular class hours to catch up on any class missed, ask any questions about specific lessons for review, to speak about any concerns they may have and to make sure their basic needs are being met.

Due to the Covid-19 pandemic we have created an emergency fund campaign to support all of our members and their families during these difficult times. We have been fortunate to receive emergency fund grants to support some of our members but we still need more help. Please help Donate.

Also I want to take this moment to thank all of our contractors that have come to the organization since the Summer of 2017 to support our program, model, best practices as I have seen their passion to support the 300 kids/youth and young adults that have been part of all of our programs.

Most people think I took this job because of a passion for technology, yes that's partially true; but the real reason is he need and urgency I have to provide hope and opportunity to the youth and young adults in this region to be exposed to careers in the tech industry. I was never exposed to this opportunities growing up in San Francisco: Visitacion Valley so I want to make sure that we close the disparity for low income young people in SF not being exposed to STEAM subjects at the education level and to close the diversity gap in the tech industry.

We are now in position to roll our five year strategic plan to implement our Dev/Mission in a box and more Dev/Mission Chapter programs outside SF and Beyond. We have an operating budget of about $500,000 and we are in pace to raise over 1.5 Million Dollars by 2023 to continue to support our mission, vision and impact. This would not have been possible without the help of one the most inspiring and passionate grant writers that I have ever known: Britt Hayse.

Thank you to everyone that has offered your support, funding, advice, coaching, encouragement, insight, network and resources as I've taken this journey with my organization.

Have I done mistakes? I am pretty sure I have but I have learned to learn from them and move on. We are still facing some challenges with our organization as we continue to expose kids/youth and young adults to STEAM Careers but if we continue to work cohesively with our partners in affordable housing, the private sector, the Mayor's Office of SF and other tech companies that have signed up to help us with those challenges they will become success stories for years to come.

Lastly, I want to thank that team of technologists that put this organization together three years ago and other young people that were part of our advisory group as well. We are now very excited to have a leadership board member team that really cares about our work and I am so excited you are part of it: Kurtis Nusbaum, Abraham Velazquez, Deborah Jaramillo, Francis Li and April Alvarez.

Finally I would to like to thank Jehova God and my family (Zulma, Ismael, Isaac and Deborah) who have believed in me with this idea and have supported my long hours of work and everyone else that has inspire me to “create the next generation of tech talent" with this organization.

For all of you, I'm truly grateful.