OTHER PROGRAM

Take IT Home -- ECS Signature Program
ECS's Take IT Home provides home computer and comprehensive services to all the members of selected school & barangay communities. We insist that each student bring a parent or guardian to a ECS half-day training session. There, teachers and families learn basic computer skills on their ECS computer before taking it home. We run our training sessions on Saturdays in the school building where our families have a variety of first experiences: the first time a child teaches his mother how to use a mouse; the first time a student sends and receives an email; the first time an immigrant father surfs the web and finds his local paper online through a link at ECS Community Corner website Once families and teachers get their computers home, our help desk and Tech Helper program provide ongoing technical support.

Tech Helper Program
This innovative program builds the technical capacity of the communities we serve by training middle-school students to support ECS home computers. Each year, two to four students from each partner school attend an intensive two-week summer training program at ECS s warehouse. Once the school year begins, these student (our Tech Helpers) become ECS s field representatives and fix computers that families bring to the school for repair. Students not only develop employable skills but become leaders within their school communities. For our families, the Tech Helper program offers a new and informal channel of technical assistance. It reduces the number of degrees of separation between them and a "nerd."

Training Program
ECS's computer distribution operates hand-in-hand with our training program. We insist that all families and teachers participate in one half-day training session where they learn basic computer skills on their ECS computer before taking it home. ECS runs two training sessions on Saturdays in the school building. We work with marikina to recruit about 20 volunteer trainers each year for a total of almost 700 hours. We also require school teachers to lead some training sessions in their schools to increase their sense of ownership of the program.