New IT Education Program Offers Free Classes For In-Demand Tech Careers

A new, free training program aims to give young people – including youth who are disconnected from education or employment as well as others looking for new opportunities – a starting point in pursuing careers in the in-demand field of information technology.

The program, called Foundations to a Career Path in Computers, is a collaboration between CfAL for Digital Inclusion and Workforce Alliance. It was first workshopped with two small cohorts in March and October, and the initial run was met with enthusiasm. Additional cohorts will take place in January and March. Classes are held in New Haven.

The course runs for six weeks, with participants meeting in person on Tuesday and Thursday evenings. Participants can be 18 to 26 years old.

Rose Servetnick, director of programs and marketing for CfAL for Digital Inclusion, said the course grew out of the success of past collaborations with Workforce Alliance.

“Since 2021 we’ve been partnering with Workforce Alliance to offer our Intro to Computer Literacy course, which is a 10-and-a-half-hour course that goes over the basics of computer use,” she said. “Everything including using Windows and Microsoft Office, sending emails, safe internet usage and basic personal cybersecurity to protect your computer.”

Servetnick said that since partnering with Workforce Alliance, the program has reached a much broader group. Over 1,000 participants have completed the introductory course, and CfAL for Digital Inclusion has provided for free over 400 refurbished computers to participants.

“As we’ve been offering this program, a lot of people were really eager to further their skills,” she said. “They were really enjoying some of the technical aspects of it and wanted to learn more and ways that they could benefit their career with more intermediate and advanced skills.”

Richard Hull, who serves as the primary instructor for the Foundations to a Career Path in Computers program, also develops the curriculum and trains other instructors. He has designed coursework that will help participants get a start in several high-demand fields.

“It’s aimed at helping participants get a foothold in all of the different branches of IT,” he said. “We have a few days of classes that are more tailored to making sure people know about all the different hardware components and what all the individual parts inside the computer do. We have a couple days that are more devoted to networks and understanding what all the different parts are and how the internet actually works, so people can troubleshoot and work with that.”

Hull also focuses on helping participants understand software and programming.

“We have a couple days where we try to get people their foothold in some of the more common programming languages that are used professionally. We get people started in HTML so if they want to look into any web development kind of jobs or anything like that, they can get started there. We poke into SQL and data analytics and those kinds of things if they’re more someone’s speed, or if someone is looking more in the general development route, we also take a stab into Python.”

The Foundations to a Career Path in Computers program has no requirements in terms of previous education or experience with information technology. Servetnick sees the program as an excellent opportunity to reach out to some of the 119,000 disconnected youth identified in a recent report from the 119K Commission. 

“I think it’s great for that specifically because [IT] is such a high demand field,” Servetnick said. “Everything we do is powered by technology these days and so these jobs are very much in demand. Because of that there’s not as stringent or as hard of a requirement to have a college degree when you’re going into a lot of these fields. For many places, if you get certain certifications through boot camps, if you can prove through a resume that you know how to do these coding languages and that you have this hands-on experience working with tech hardware, there’s not as much of a barrier.”

Servetnick said that many of the IT jobs that the program prepares young people for can start at $60,000 to $70,000 a year, without requiring young people to take on the financial burden of earning a college degree first. The program offers a pathway to technology employment for groups who are often marginalized in those fields.

“When we look at the demographics of our participants, 90% of them don’t have a working computer in the home. 20% don’t have any cable, internet, or both. More than half have not had any higher education. 10% are homeless or in transient housing. More than half of them are women, 73% are people of color, about half are unemployed or underemployed and most make less than 40,000 a year,” she said.

Interested youth between the ages of 18-26 can sign up now for the January Cohort at CfAL for Digital Inclusion’s website. Classes begin on January 7.