The Center for Social Support and Education (CSSE) is announcing the expansion of their Learning Center programs with the addition of new computer training classes that are specially designed for individuals who have no computer experience. Through a donation from SAIC, in affiliation with the Futures Foundation, CSSE has been provided with 18 new Pentium 3 computers that will be used in the classes. At the end of the program, eligible students will take part in a drawing to take home one of the computers that they used. The team of CSSE and the Futures Foundation is a natural fit, as the Futures Foundation seeks out ways to help narrow the “digital divide.”

“You need to understand that the target population that we deal with are homeless, HIV-positive, low income, and people that are basically called the neediest of the needy,” Arvella Murray, the executive director of CSSE, told the Gay and Lesbian Times. “Oftentimes they come here with a whole lot of other issues. Part of the strategy was to put in the learning center. They come and they have reading disabilities, or cannot read well, and of course, if you talk about the digital divide and people getting farther behind this group is probably a good example of it.”

For her work in developing the Learning Center the Technology Training Foundation of America awarded Murray with the Technology Hero Award. The Learning Center not only provides instruction in computer use but also has digital cameras, scanners, printers and Internet connections available for its clients to use.

Rose Hicks, an instructor from San Diego City College, volunteers at the center to provide training and support for students who are participating in the program.

“[CSSE] contacted me in the summer and was interested in providing computer literacy courses here,” Hicks said. “[They] wanted to see if it was possible to come up with a plan to deliver computer literacy for the people in who come and get services from the center.”

In the first classes, held in August, students were provided with a manual that covered everything from turning on the computer and identifying what a mouse is to the basics of using programs like Microsoft Office and Internet Explorer.

“It’s not geared towards a normal class where people work within a structure,” Hicks explained. “There is a degree of structure, but they have the freedom to develop something of their own. At the end of each module they have something that they take that is their own.”

Assignments in the class were geared towards real world applications of the computer programs, such as writing résumés in Word or budget planning with Excel. Students were even taught to make flyers.

“If you’re computer literate, making a flyer is no big deal,” Hicks said. “If you’re not, it can be a big task. They have learned to use color, fonts and style to make something they can post somewhere and get attention.”

The next series of introductory classes are scheduled to begin in early January, and students who participate in that class will be eligible to take home one of the computers.

“Oftentimes people will go to a class, but then they never can buy a computer to keep the skills up to actually be able to use the knowledge, and use it to the point that it is an extension of day-to-day living,” Murray said. “The computer becomes this tool, especially with people with HIV and AIDS. A lot of people become isolated because of the stigma associated with it and they don’t get involved. This allows them to communicate and keep up without them having to even come out of their house.”

Students in the class range from age 18 to 82, and students who have learned to use the computers through the Learning Center are already showing signs of success. Robert Goleman, 29, was homeless a year ago. Now he has his own apartment, manages his own budget and is enrolled in school and employed.

“I met Miss Rose [Hicks] and she asked me what I was doing,” Goleman said. “She saw me working and asked what I was doing and why I wasn’t in school. Miss Rose was kind of tough and she said that there is no excuse and that I could [go to college]. I basically said ‘I’m 30 years old, it’s too late.’ A couple of weeks later Miss Rose brought me in an application to go to college. I enrolled in her class and I’m still faced with the fact that I don’t know if I can do it, but I have five times greater skills now than I had a year ago. I’m farther along than I thought I was going to be at this point.”

Hicks also showed Goleman how he can go online to apply for grants that cover the cost of his tuition at City College. It’s a tremendous turnaround for Goleman, who used crystal-meth for seven years and has spent time in jail.

“Basically I have had no stability in my life. No sense of responsibility, no sense of keeping a house over my head,” Goleman said. “It’s amazing to me to see what I have done in just the last year. I can look at myself in the mirror and, whereas I was hiding before as a person, not knowing who I am, I look in the mirror every morning now and I know who I am and I am comfortable with who I am and I am not looking back anymore.”

The success of the classes and the learning center does not come as a surprise to Murray, who says, “It was to teach them how to use resources to get information and basically take charge of their health more and to advocate for themselves. In learning how to use the computer they learn how to go on the Internet and they learn how to look up things. And knowledge is power.”

Individuals interested in signing up for the computer education courses can contact CSSE at (619) 325-2773. Murray hopes that if CSSE is able to secure more computer donations in the future, all of the students who participate in the course will be able to take home a new computer that they can use in their everyday life.