Shop Talk: NPower PA ITWorks graduates first class

Last November, the trains that normally shot South in regular intervals on the Broad Street Line were at a standstill.

But as SEPTA’s transit workers—at strike over wage and pension issues—were busy on the picket lines, nothing was going to stop Eric Harper, bound to a wheelchair, from making it to class. Harper, living in North Philadelphia, trekked more than 40 blocks to Drexel University.

Harper is one of ten students that graced the stage at Drexel’s Mitchell Auditorium Tuesday morning to receive his diploma for ITWorks, an Information Technology job-training program for disadvantaged young adults. Harper is a member of the first graduating ITWorks class, a program put together by NPower PA, a nonprofit that does IT work for other local nonprofits.

Through a collaboration with the United Way of Southeastern Pennsylvania, NPower helped identify a need for a cost-free training program to help young high school or equivalency graduates that were neither employed or seeking post-secondary education, whom were getting by on part-time work. It was as much an opportunity to to support the community and it was to support NPower’s partner organizations, who were seeking more hands in their IT departments.

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Technically Not Tech: NPower PA gives IT support to nonprofits in need

Updated: added grant details @ 4:35 p.m.6/16/09

It just might take a miracle to help lead at-risk Philadelphia teens away from the obstacles that have become something of a cliche in the urban education saga.

It will take a miracle or, perhaps, youth organizations that share information with each other through a sophisticated network of information sharing technologies.

That’s what NPower PA does.

The Center City organization fundraises for, organizes, implements and maintains IT for nonprofits that can benefit but don’t have the capital to do so on their own.

In January, this six-year-old group, one of 11 in the national NPower Network, completed perhaps its most ambitious project. After winning the grant in July 2007, NPower PA began integrating a collaborative data collection system in four communities — three in Philly and one in Chester — in the hopes of helping those young people better navigate the pitfalls they face.

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