Tech Citizenship
2007
Pay it forward
IBM Engineer steps up to bridge ‘digital disconnect’
For software engineer Angelo Lynn, community service is a hereditary condition.
Lynn’s father is a Boston-based community activist, and his grandfather, Conrad Lynn, was a civil rights lawyer who participated in the freedom rides throughout the South in the early 1960s to protest racial discrimination. Conrad Lynn also defended his fellow riders, as well as conscientious objectors to the Vietnam War, in court.
“I’ve kind of been groomed to take on this role,” says Angelo Lynn, of his focus on philanthropy. “I just happen to be an engineer.”
Angelo Lynn, who works on IBM Corp.’s Lotus Domino server product at the computer giant’s Westford site, headed up a five-person team last January that ran a 10-week afterschool “apprenticeship” in robotics at the Doctor An Wang Middle School in Lowell. Lynn, who grew up in Roxbury, said the program helped address what he calls a “digital disconnect.”
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THE GLOBAL CHILD
Location: Phnom Penh, Cambodia
Mission: To educate underprivileged children
Founded: 2003
Students: 25
What’s new: MIT students designing new schoolEastwood
MIT, Eastwood educate in Cambodia
Jackie Eastwood is armed with the expertise of engineering recruits from MIT and in search of $300,000 to $400,000 to relocate students from the dangerous streets of Cambodia’s capital city to a new — and safer — school in a rural area of the country.
It’s the latest chapter in Eastwood’s quest to support specialized education for gifted street children living in war-torn or developing countries such as Cambodia. MIT, in addition to supporting student participation, has turned the efforts at the Cambodian school into a five-year lab allowing students to engage in life-changing work and get credit for it.
Eastwood, former CEO of Dover, N.H.-based TissueLink Medical Inc. and a fund-raiser for Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign, is working through a nonprofit called The Global Child, which she co-founded in 2003 with her husband, sister and brother-in-law.
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Giving thanks
Nonprofits applaud their tech benefactors
Mel King: Director / The South End Technology Center @ Tent City, Boston
Benefactors: Avid Technologies Inc., IBM Corp., Microsoft Corp.
Contribution: Software and personal computers to provide job skills to 800 people per year at the center that was founded in 1997. Students learn media-editing skills on Avid’s software and various programs with Microsoft software — all on computers donated by IBM.
“The software is very, very important. We have open access, and we couldn’t survive (without donations) because the needs for young people are so great. Our young people are the building blocks for the industry’s future. We tell them to not only learn (Microsoft’s) Office, but also (Adobe) Photoshop and web design. If you’re operating a small business, it’s to your advantage if you have someone doing clerical work who can also keep your web page current.”
King said additional support and inspiration is needed from local tech employers — by providing tours of their facilities to trainees participating in programs at The South End Technology Center.
“The more places where people look like our guests, who are predominantly black and Asian, then that’s an addition. It’s important that they see themselves attending MIT and Wentworth, and it’s important for them to see themselves at the next level, in the industries.”
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