A Camden NJ organization plans to team young people with IT professionals for computer training.
Politicians have offered dozens of solutions to America’s impoverished cities, rarely with much success. Now a New Jersey nonprofit is hoping that technology training will help address one tough city’s challenges.
Camden New Jersey has long been known as an underdeveloped, poor neighbor to Philadelphia, the major city just across the Ben Franklin Bridge. But the nonprofit youth services group Hopeworks N’Camden believes that training in coding can help the town’s young people and bring benefits to Camden as well, according to an AP story.
This weekend the group is holding its first “hackathon” bringing together professional developers with local young people who want to learn computer coding. Some of the IT professionals will be from Subura, which has announced it will be moving its North American headquarters to Camden.
Hopeworks plans to use the hackathon events, which they hope to host every six months, to help support local government and business technology needs, in addition to training the young people. A local government agency, for example, could request a new website that would be built by a team put together at an event.
In addition to Subaru, other area companies committed to working with the project include the nuclear technology company Holtec, American Water, and the NBA’s Philadelphia 76ers.
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