Planes. Bailouts. Budgets. Violence. When it comes to local news, I’ll pass. Add in cable and it’s even more of a fiasco – from one extreme (FOX News) to another (MSNBC). I resort to reading my daily blogs and resources like The Economist and National Public Radio (NPR). It’s the latter that caught my attention with an article about a non-profit called Hack the Hood, located in the Bay Area.

“Hack the Hood provides technical training in high in-demand multimedia and tech skills to youth who will then apply their learning through real-world consulting projects with locally-owned businesses and non-profits.  During sprints that are 6-weeks long, low-income youth gain hands-on training and experience executing search engine optimization; building mobile friendly, responsive web sites using template software; and getting clients listed in local maps and directories.”

Hack the Hood was 1 of 4 companies that recently won a $500,000 award from Google. When I see these types of articles, it not only warms my heart, I also love reading the comments. Here’s one of my favorites from Steve:

When you provide instructions to a computer in a language it understands, it will do exactly what you tell it to do. The computer doesn’t care what color you are, whether or not you have a degree, or it if your dad was a Governor. This makes a tech career much fairer than the rest of our economy.

The non-profit seeks donations, including: laptops, digital cameras, bus passes and of course a Benjamin (or two) will do.