Fall-Winter 2002-2003

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The CTC Support Project: Local Support, National Implications

by Trang Le

CTC Support Project Places Technical Volunteers for MIT CityDays

Marissa Martin

Forty-five MIT students volunteered at Boston-area CTCs on August 30, 2002, as part of a joint CTCNet Service Learning and MIT CityDays event. (MIT CityDays is a project of the MIT Public Service Center.) Participating CTCs included the Urban League of Eastern Massachusetts, El Batey Technology Center, and the McNamara House.

The three groups of MIT student volunteers relocated computer and other equipment, set up a community cookout for immigrant and special needs residents, and set up take-home computers in peoples' homes. "It was an excellent event and a great opportunity,"said Khalid Mustafa, a program director at the Urban League of Eastern Massachusetts. "[This] opens up lines of communication with the students and offers them exposure to the community." About twenty energetic and enthusiastic student volunteers pitched in to move computers and other equipment at the Urban League of Eastern Massachusetts CTC. Afterwards, Mustafa gave them program brochures and business cards. "A couple of them seemed really interested in coming back."

Angel Peralta, General Manager of El Batey, a CTC that serves the predominately Latino community Inquilinos Boricuas en Accion, was also grateful for the volunteers' assistance. "They did a great job. I was amazed how organized they were." At El Batey, the MIT students gave the computer lab a makeover, including rewiring for the new set-up. Several volunteers then brought the take-home recycled computers to life in residents' homes

The CTC Support Project arranged for the collaboration with MIT for the event. One major goal of the CTC Support Project is to bring together universities and CTCs for mutual learning and benefit.

When CTCNet was awarded a grant from State Street's Global Philanthropy Program in July of 2000, we intended to pilot a Floating Help Desk that would involve roughly 14 CTCNet affiliates in the Boston Metropolitan area.

Matt Crichton, Trang Le, and David Smith

At the Support Project workshop on planning with Matt Crichton, CTC
VISTA Project: CTCNet Project Coordinator Trang Le and David
Smith from Solutions at Work.

During the project planning process, we realized that to create a replicable support model that would consistently address the volunteer and operational needs of CTCs, we would need to include services that reached far beyond the level of support offered by a simple help desk. The Technical Volunteer Matching Program was the first component of the project to be implemented in the summer of 2001, established for recruiting local, skilled technical volunteers to provide participating CTCs with direct and onsite technical support in response to a CTC's specific requests for service. Since then, the CTC Support Project has developed in size, capacity, and scope appropriately reflecting the technical needs identified by CTCs and currently also includes:

Quarterly Workshop Series—Intended to help the staff and directors of our participating centers deepen their knowledge in various areas that cannot be addressed through the use of volunteers. The topics of each workshop/training are specific issues that the CTCs themselves have identified and are struggling to resolve.
Technical Help Desk—Addresses short-term and specific technical needs without the presence of an onsite volunteer. A local phone number and email address have been set up to answer day-to-day technical questions.
Consultant Directory—Consists of approximately 20 local consultants who are experienced in providing consultation services to nonprofits.
Online Resources—Contains project's background information and resources that are useful for both volunteers and CTCs such as volunteer management policy, technology plans, assessment tools, curriculum materials, and more.

The CTC Support Project, a pilot program in the Metropolitan Boston area run by CTCNet from 2001 - 2003, has concluded its work. The project has served as the basis for the CTC Support Handbook, which can be found here.

Trang Le and Marissa Martin are Project Coordinators at CTCNet.

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