BDPA Education and Technology Foundation (BETF) worked with National BDPA VP-Member Services Paulette Johnson-Davis on a letter of inquiry (LOI) sent to the Goldman Sachs Foundation. Our LOI asked permission to submit a full grant proposal for our 2011 SITES program in three areas:
1. BDPA IT Corps – is an information technology “peace corps” concept that addresses the interests and direct participation of young adults aspiring to succeed in the IT industry in the United States. The BDPA IT Corps responds to the effect of globalization and for the urgent needs of developing countries to obtain more technology awareness, education and skills.
We plan to recruit students from the 45 BDPA chapters to serve in the IT Corps. These students will be sent to an African country to participate in an international program that focuses on education, software development, “real-world” problem solving, as well as competitive social activities. After returning to the United States the IT Corps students will continue to foster online relationships with the African students via blogs and other acceptable forms of online communication.
2. BDPA IT Showcase - allows student presenters from educational institutions all over the United States to present and demonstrate their research. The presentations will represent advanced computing topics presented by highly motivated high school and college students to an audience of students and IT professionals. Recent presentations from these young people were on topics such as: computer graphics technologies, computing curricula, intelligent technologies (e.g., smart toys, machine learning or genetic algorithms), parallel computing technologies, wearable computing technologies and web technologies.
3. High School Computer Competition – This program celebrates its 25th year anniversary in 2010. Throughout the year, local chapters conduct SITES training programs for the youth in their communities. These programs are designed to expose our youth to the concepts of computers and give them the expertise to develop web applications. The program introduces our youth to the field of Information Technology. Our volunteers around the nation encourage these young people to seek higher levels of education, and groom many of them to become our next generation of IT professionals.
Our hope is for a positive response from Goldman Sachs Foundation. Wish us luck!
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