Idetthe Patino - Teen Student & Volunteer

CMG opened its Plant City location in June, 2007. The first teen IC3 Certifications were awarded to the sister/brother duo of Idetthe and Keb Patino. We are especially proud of Idetthe because she is enrolled in our Wednesday evening Certified Internet Webmaster (CIW) Program, in addition to being a CMG volunteer.

CMG advanced student, Idetthe Patino.

Idetthe is a volunteer instructor assistant with the Tuesday and Thursday Adult Basic Computer education programs. Since most of the adult students have Spanish as their primary language, the instructors rely on Idetthe’s multi-lingual skills to be effective. She is to be recognized for her self-motivation, initiative and community spirit in assisting these ambitious adults acquire necessary 21st century knowledge and skills.

She is a Simmons Career Center student. With a computer career as her long-term goal, Idetthe is taking all possible computer courses at this Hillsborough County high school. We wish Idetthe continued success in achieving her long-term goals.

A New Summer Middle School Pre A+ Certification Program

Computer Mentors Group (CMG) is offering a summer computer technician program to middle school students. This Federal Title 1 Program is being held in conjunction with  School District of Hillsborough School administrator assistance. Dr. Maxine Woodside, SDHC consultant, was instrumental is acquiring program funding.

Summer Camp Students During Computer Building Exercise

This program is designed to help the students obtain fundamental knowledge of personal computer technician skills. The curriculum consists of a subset of objectives from the CompTIA A+ certification and can be considered a pre-A+ Certification course.

The program will be held from June 9th through the end of July at seven middle school/youth facility sites. The participating students were selected by administrators at each location. This eight week program will have two hour classes twice a week. Every student will build his own computer and get to keep it. Also, they will keep a PC technician toolkit.

This is an opportunity for these students to begin a multi-year relationship with CMG. By high school graduation , a self-motivated teen will have an IC3 Certification, a pre-A+ Certification, a CompTIA A+ Certification, and several summer internships. With this knowledge, an individual will be qualified to earn a high part-time salary during their college years.

From the Director

Hello again everyone,

Thank you all again for taking the time to read our newsletter. The summer has begun and it is extremely busy for us now with all the summer youth programs. We’ve been blessed to be able to have eight (8) of our students working as interns this summer, a new record for us. We give a special thanks to the Eckerd Family Foundation for making internship dollars available that allows us to give these young people this opportunity.

Also I want to thank our latest major contributors. Last month Eckerd Family Foundation and Children’s Board of Hillsborough County teamed up to provided the remaining portion of funds needed to complete the development of our youth friendly version of the IC3 certification curriculum. The developers our putting the finishing touches on the curriculum and it should (finally) be completed next month, just in time for back to school. Also, Conn Memorial Foundation, our most staunch supporter, made a new grant that includes a challenge portion of $10,000 that we need match to meet, and Citi, my former employer has once again contributed $10,000 to our youth program. Financially, we are still struggling because we are really trying to do a lot, but these and the donations from our anonymous are keeping us on our mission of providing computer training, in-home technology, information access, and skill development to those who live in communities without sufficient resources.

One last request. We are in need of additional computers and monitors for our back-to-school giveaway. The computers should be at least Pentium III 800Mhz level we accept 17” CRT monitors or any size flat panel monitor. We will once again provide these to the students at Academy Prep of Tampa but will have additional units if you are aware of a worthy group.

Sincerely,