Twitter-funded learning center for homeless set to open next summer on Market Street

[yuiyoshida]

The Chronicle has learned that Twitter has moved a one step closer toward opening a $1 million learning center where company employees will teach tech skills to some of the city’s poorest residents.

They’ve got a location now for what’s being dubbed The NeighborNest. It’s right across the street from Twitter HQ at the Essex Fox Plaza, 1390 Market Street. And they’ve got a projected opening date: Sometime next summer.

Twitter is investing $1 million in the facility, which will be a partnership with Compass Family Services, which serves 3,500 homeless families, many of whom are from the surrounding neighborhood. Compass is the main nonprofit agency serving homeless families in San Francisco, overseeing an $8 million annual budget and seven programs, including a family shelter, a rent-subsidy program and Clara House, a 35-resident center in Hayes Valley.

Twitter leaders have met for several months with homeless families, service providers and other stakeholders to riff ideas on what the center will look like. Check out some early renderings of the center in the slide show above.

http://blog.sfgate.com/techchron/2014/10/23/twitter-funded-learning-center-for-homeless-set-to-open-next-summer-on-market-street/

[daredtowork]

1. My question is

Will these be enough skills to make these families tech "customers" or will these be enough skills to get the children of these families on a real track toward well-paid tech careers.

I am skeptical.

I see employment is 20% skills, 30% interview personability, and 50% good old-fashioned who-you-know. You can try to tell me I'm paranoid to believe that, but I was pretty much permanently scarred by reading the Enron HR emails. Yep, there's still micro-exchanges about who is a "good candidate" that people "should look at" or that "we want to hire". Thinks will only change when Silicon Valley execs take a stroll into West Oakland and start seeing future "rock stars" hanging out on the corners.