Our Work in San Francisco

Since January, 2003, we have been providing technical support and assistance for San Francisco-based nonprofits. This serves a number of functions; it provides underfunded and overworked nonprofits with much-needed free-of-charge technical assistance, and it gives our students a chance both to home their practical skills and also to gain an appreciation for the value of service to others. We believe that this is in keeping with the Jesuit tradition of educating the whole person, both heart and mind, to be an active, engaged member of their community.

Network Ministries: Spring 2003

Community Connections began in the Spring of 2003 with two students, Jose Guadamuz and Clark Goto, who worked with Network Ministries (NM). Network Ministries is a Jesuit nonprofit providing poor and homeless persons with counseling, housing, tutoring, and computer training. Clark and Jose performed an audit of NM's two computer labs and suggested upgrades, installed new hardware and software, redesigned NM's web site, reconfigured the site's network and router,, and installed new monitors.

Clark and Jose at work.

Here is a press release describing our work with Network Ministries.

Network Ministries, SafeHouse: Summer 2003

In Summer 2003, Josephine Chuang and Jon Toews joined our program and picked up where Clark and Jose left off. They installed a new file server, performed software configuration, implemented ghosting for networked clients, and performed hardware maintenance.

Josephine also worked as a drop-in volunteer at Network Ministries. In addition, she performed tech support for SafeHouse, an organization dedicated to helping women escape prostitution. For SafeHouse, Jospehine performed hardware and software maintenance and setup, as well as troubleshooting.

Network Ministries, SafeHouse, Breakthrough Collaborative: Fall 2003

In Fall, 2003 Xavier Quintuna and Sherman Yang joined Community Connections and began working with Network Ministries. They set up user accounts in NM's adult lab and helped upgrade their computers. Matt Jedynak, John Livingood, and Josh Soriano also began working with a new partner, Breakthrough Collaborative. Breakthrough operates a mentoring program that pairs high-school and college-age students with younger students. Matt worked with Breakthrough on updating their website, while Josh and John helped with equipment evaluation and maintenance.

Spring 2004: Community Connections Grows

In Spring 2004, we integrated Community Connections with a USF Computer Science course: Computers and Society. The 22 students in the course volunteered at least one afternoon per week working with one of our partners. We continued working with Network Ministries; the increase in the number of students allowed us to have some students work as drop-in lab assistants, in addition to technical support. This was a valuable experience for the students, as they got a chance to see first-hand the importance that Network Ministries' labs have for many of their clients.

We also continued our work with SafeHouse and Breakthrough Collaborative. In addition, we have recently added a new client: Hire-ability.org. Hire-ability.org provides job training to San Francisco adults with disabilities. They have recently received a number of donated computers, and our students are helping to evaluate them for use in a computer lab.

Our students are also working here on the USF campus, both in the Service Learning office, where they are helping to update and maintain a database of community partners, and with the MFA program, where they are helping to create an online literary journal.

Future Plans

We plan to continue our work with our existing partners. In addition, we are always looking for new agencies to partner with. If you are affiliated with or know of an organization that would be a good fit for our servers, please get in touch with us.

We are also in the preliminary stages of setting up a summer school here at USF for local girls who are interested in learning more about computer science. More details about this will be forthcoming.