An Exciting CMG Third Annual Tech Bowl

On Saturday, October 25, Computer Mentors Group, Inc. held its Third Annual Tech Bowl. The event site was, again, the HCC - Brandon campus. Twelve teams, composed of four high school students each, participated in this competition. The students were prepared for the Tech Bowl by their adult team coach in three evening training sessions.

This years' Tech Bowl had very evenly matched teams. Many matches had to use very difficult "sudden death" questions to produce a team winner in the double elimination event. The questions submitted by local IT professionals, excellent coaching, and the students’ computer knowledge made for an exciting day. A special thanks goes to Raymond James for supplying five team coaches.

Pictured left to right is Kelvin Henry, J'aiChaim Welch, coach Jim Nickerson,
Judiceux Welch, and Edrick Jones. Not pictured is Jim Truit who also coached.

The 2008 Tech Bowl winner is the IT Authorities team. Each team member received a brand-new Toshiba laptop computer. The team was coached by Jim Truitt, Tampa Bay Tech teacher, and Jim Nickerson of IT Authorities. The runners-up team sponsored by Nielsen Media received Wii video game systems. The third place team members, sponsored by Citi, were awarded 22" flat panel computer monitors.

None of this would have been held without the efforts of the CMG staff, the many volunteers, enthusiastic families, coaches, and sponsors. The Gigabyte sponsors were J.P. Morgan, Raymond James, and Nielsen Media. The other team sponsors were the Lucent Group, Numara Software, Citi, Holland & Knight, Interface Network Systems, Microsoft, St. Pete Times, ConnectWise, and IT Authorities. Other ad and prize sponsors were AMF, MOSI, Caspers Company (McDonalds), BrightHouse, and the 100 Black Men of Tampa Bay, Inc. through a donation from George Tinsley and PenGeo, Inc.

CMG is very proud of the continuing success of this annual challenge for our motivated, computer-oriented youth.

Computer Mentors Receives 2008 Bank of America Award

CMG is a recipient of the 2008 Bank of America Hillsborough County Neighborhood Excellence Initiative - Neighborhood Builders Award. The only other awardee is the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center. This is very exclusive company. Each Neighborhood Builder will receive $200,000 in grant funding for operational support - $100,000 annually for two years. CMG will use this grant to build additional infrastructure in management, administration and marketing.

Pictured are Marlene Omlor, Board Vice-Chair David Omlor, Exec. Dir. Ralph Smith, Program Dir. John Corsell, Program Manager Christian Silva, Employee Regina Nelson, Employee Jackie Toy, Board Treasurer Charnell Patrick-Williams, Employee Derek Williams, Board Chair Juan Davis.

Bank of America is to be recognized for its community investments. They will invest $3 million and nearly 10,000 volunteer hours into not-for-profit organizations by the end of 2008. Additionally, their associates use their professional expertise to benefit the Hillsborough area through participation on boards of directors.

The CMG successes highlighted at the ceremony were the Youth Computer Certification and Ownership, the Adult Literacy, and the Computer Mentors Kids programs. Ralph Smith, CMG Executive Director, comments upon receiving the award were "this is the largest award that we have received in our 11-year history and to receive such a sought after award is true affirmation that the service that we provide is truly valued in the community."

CMG is very appreciative of this award and will use the grant to build the managerial infrastructure that is capable of sustaining the organization as it grows.

"SMART CHARLIE" is Succeeding

Starting in September, 2008, the new CMG Teen Program students now use the Computer Mentors Tech Teen-Team curriculum featuring the avatar, Smart Charlie. The intent of this "teen friendly" software is to guide our teens through the basic computer software and hardware instruction in an easy-to-use, fun manner.

In the past, our teens had to pass the computer hardware section of the IC3 curriculum before we awarded them a free desktop computer. This process averaged four months. To pass all three IC3 sections (hardware, software, and applications) took over a year on the average for a teen that applied himself/herself.

Tuesday's "Smart Charlie" class with instructors
Regina Nelson and Christian Silva (front center).

CMG is pleased to report that six new teens have already completed the Smart Charley curriculum within four sessions. These teens are in the process of dismantling and the reassembling of a personal computer. They will then receive a free personal computer before proceeding to IC3 certification instruction. CMG is confident that Smart Charlie has prepared these students to achieve their nationally-recognized IC3 certification in a more timely manner.

We'll keep you posted on the progress of all teens enrolled in the new Computer Mentors Tech Teen-Team program.

Message from the Director

Hello everyone and thank you once again for taking time to read our newsletter. I apologize already for the length of it already, but we missed last month and have so many great things to tell you about.

First of all I want to congratulate again the Jason Caras and the team at IT Authorities as winners of the 2008 Technology Bowl. This year was the toughest competition that we’ve had thus far with the winning team only missing one question during the entire competition. We also want to thank the rest of the sponsors, Citi, Connectwise , Hillsborough Community College, Holland & Knight, Interface Network Systems, JPMorgan, Microsoft, Lucent Group, Nielsen Media, Numara Software, Raymond James Financial, and St. Petersburg Times. I also want to that the many many volunteers that came out to help and give special recognition to Citi and Verizon employee groups that were instrumental in providing great volunteers where about 40 people helped us to had a top notch quality event.

Computer Mentors continues to thrive, and of course, as a public charity we’re not able to do so without the support we receive from the community. A lot of our support comes from philanthropic organizations that believe in building a better community through creative philanthropy, vision and leadership. One such organization is Community Foundation of Tampa Bay (CF). CF made a $7,500 donation to assist our teens to become technology ambassadors, bringing technology into low-income homes. This is the third such donation made by CF in our eleven year history and we want to thank them for their continued support.

2008 has been a difficult year for non-profit organizations. Computer Mentors was witnessing a 40% reduction in corporate and foundation grants this year. That would have made for a very lean year for CMG if it had not been for Bank of America (BOA). Bank of America awarded Computer Mentors the 2008 Neighborhood Builders award for Hillsborough County. The award came with a $200,000 donation, distributed over the next two years, and an opportunity for management training and to meet the other winners from around the US. This is an award that we are very proud to have received, in that it is one of the most prestige’s grant awards given away in the county. It is certainly sought after by a vast majority of the non-profit community. BOA held an award ceremony on Nov. 13th at the historic Tampa Theater. Many other great organizations and people were recognized including the Tampa Performing Art Center who also received the Neighborhood Builders Award. It is the largest award that CMG has received in our eleven year history.

I’d also like to share some information about another great donation. Not only have we just received our largest financial donation from Bank of America, but now we have received our largest computer donation in our 11-year history. On November 10th Hostway Corporation donated a little over 1,000 Pentium 4 computers to our group. This one donation places Hostway as our all time equipment donation leader, replacing previous leader Raymond James Financial. This donation will start paying dividends to the community right away as we partner with the 100 Black Men of Tampa Bay and Tampa Heights Civic Society to provide almost 100 computers to kids for Christmas (Thank you Microsoft for the software obtained through the MAR program).

Sincerely,

Email: rsmith@computermentors.org
Phone: (813) 236-1191