Computers for Inner-city Kids
Diane Lenz, USA |
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As a high-powered financial consultant on Wall Street, Diane Lenz is used to making things happen in the business world. But when she participated in Landmark Education's Introduction Leaders program, she met up with a fellow student, Ami Ariel, who inspired her to turn her attentions - and use her considerable Rolodex - to helping inner-city kids in her own backyard who lacked the fundamental technological tools to get ahead in the world.
Imagine having to wait several hours for a computer at your public library just to get your homework done. That's exactly the plight of thousands of disadvantaged school kids across the country whose parents - and schools - can't afford to provide them a computer. Chagrined by the ever-widening digital divide, Landmark grad Diane Lenz, a New York City-based IT business consultant who began her career teaching eighth- and ninth-grade English in Kansas, decided to do something about it: she helped found www.Comp2Kids.org, a nonprofit organization that aims to empower kids and their teachers through technology.
“I wanted to extend the important difference Landmark Education made in my life out into the community,” Lenz says. “I wanted to take the energy, the joy, the transformation, and have it benefit others. Who better to do this for than children? They represent the strongest return on investment in the world.”
So far, Lenz has used her masterful fundraising abilities and her and her colleagues' list of business contacts to buy several hundred used computers from Wall Street banks that are scrubbed of all data and then loaded with Microsoft products. Lenz and her flock of volunteers have focused on Roberto Clemente School in Harlem, distributing computers to all of the 137 sixth-grade students and laptops to the 107 teachers. But, the program doesn't stop there. Comp2Kids also trains both the teachers and the students in navigating their new computers.
“We don't feel like kids benefit just by having a computer,” Lenz says. “The training is the real benefit. My team goes into the school and trains the teachers, and then we actually travel to the kids' homes to train them there.”
Comp2Kids has been cited as an exemplary program by New York Schools Superintendent Joel Klein, and Lenz and her team were also recently named “New Yorkers of the Week” by a local television station. The organization plans on donating 300 more computers to Roberto Clemente students this year.
“It's been an incredible impact on these kids,” Lenz says. “We walked into a one-room home recently - think about that: a mother and a child living in one room - and we installed a computer. Neither of them spoke much English, but the gratitude, the communication, the hugs… I mean, it's really touching because you knew that this was going to change this child's life.”
Overwhelmed by the generosity, the children have often asked Lenz and her crew how they could ever repay them. “And our answer would always be, ‘Use this. Use it to change your life. Access scholarships to get into college; use it to impel yourself to live a great life,' Lenz says.
“The kids totally got it. It's been very revolutionary.”
See more articles about Grads Making a Difference.