WATSONVILLE >> Jacob Martinez has spent the past decade introducing Watsonville teens to technology through an after-school program.
He”s scaling up.
Martinez”s new vision is Digital NEST, a hip workspace where young people can come together to learn skills, innovate, and create their futures.
The 90-minute, once-a-week sessions he runs at Pajaro Valley school aren”t enough to allow young people to fully explore their potential, he said, especially in a disadvantaged community such as Watsonville where many have only limited access to technology at home.
“All these kids were motivated to get into tech, but they didn”t have access,” Martinez said. “I always thought to myself, ”What would the outcome be like if they had the access?””
Martinez thinks he knows: A technologically savvy, innovative community of workers and entrepreneurs to drive the economies of both ends of Santa Cruz County.
With nonprofit Digital NEST — the initials stand for Nurturing Entrepreneurial Skills with Technology — Martinez aims to create the community. He”s raised $60,000 of the $200,000 he needs in matching funds to secure a $100,000 pledge from a venture capitalist by the end of the year. An online fundraising campaign is underway at atdigitalnest.fundly.com/digital-nest-launch.
“I tell people it”s not a donation, it”s an investment, an investment in your community,” Martinez said. “This is going to be big. This is going to revolutionize the way we prepare our youth for the work force.”
Once the Watsonville site is up and running, Martinez plans to expand. He”s had queries from people as far away as Florida.
Martinez isn”t the only one who thinks he”s onto something.
Jeremy Neuner, who co-founded NextSpace in Santa Cruz in 2008, is an adviser to the project.
In six years, NextSpace, which provides shared office space and business services to entrepreneurs, small business owners and freelancers, has grown to eight sites, including three in San Francisco, one in Los Angeles and one in Chicago.
“Digital NEST will give youth access not only to the technology they need, but … the inspiration they need to be successful in the 21st century,” Neuner said.
Digital divide
A Field Poll, released July 8, looked at Internet use and confirmed a persistent technological gap based on income and ethnicity. Latinos, especially Spanish-speakers, the poll found, were less likely than whites to be online or have access to a broadband connection.
Recent revelations about Silicon Valley hiring show Latinos, who represent about 39 percent of California”s population, have barely made a dent in the workforce.
Martinez, who graduated from UC Santa Cruz with a biology degree, isn”t surprised. He recalled how few students looked like him in the science labs. It”s one of the reasons he went to work for ETR Associates in Scotts Valley.
His first job was starting an after-school program that would teach middle-school girls to create computer games as a way of promoting careers in science and technology. The pilot project morphed into the award-winning program, Watsonville TEC, a partnership between ETR and Pajaro Valley Unified School District that serves hundreds of students in 15 schools.
In Watsonville, a city that”s 75 percent Latino and with a substantial population of Spanish-speaking immigrant farmworkers, Martinez said he discovered if students had a computer at home, it was often outdated, shared with numerous members of the household or without Internet access.
In places such as Cupertino or Palo Alto, parents have the professional connections and economic wherewithal to nurture technological interest and ambition in their children, he said.
In communities such as Watsonville, parents, who work long hours in low-income jobs, rarely have the skills, money or energy to do the same.
“The real issue is access. They don”t have equal access to opportunity,” Martinez said.
But the aspirations are there. When he issued an invitation to a planning meeting, 40 youth showed up, most from Watsonville, but also from Harbor and Santa Cruz high schools, and from UCSC and Cal State Monterey Bay. During introductions, they shared such goals as learning programming, web design, and game development.
“I told them the possibilities are endless,” Martinez said. He”s working to make it happen.
The plan
Martinez is close to signing a lease on a 2,000-square-foot space near the Home Depot on Green Valley Road. There, with an annual budget of $350,000, he plans to create a space, modeled after the working environments adopted by Silicon Valley giants such as Google to foster innovation and creativity — the antithesis of the banks of computers lined up against beige walls in most public computer labs.
He”s planning a September launch.
Membership will be open to youth, ages 12-24 throughout the county.
Younger members will pay $3 an hour to rent a fully loaded laptop, and if they complete one of the free classes that will be offered by Digital NEST, they”ll get two hours of free computer time.
Martinez is working on a membership model for young adults that he said would probably be based on a monthly fee.
He also plans to market services like web design at bargain prices. He”ll hire members who earn Digital NEST certificates through free classes to do the work.
“We”ll provide jobs and build resumes for jobs and college applications,” Martinez said.
Erica Manfre, sales and marketing manager at Watsonville Coast Produce and Digital NEST board member, said she sees the need for workers skilled in technology in the region”s agricultural industry, and the potential for innovation.
She said she could have used a program like Digital NEST when she returned to Watsonville after graduating from Cal Poly with a degree in agriculture business in 2006. Since she started at the produce distributor in January, she”s rebuilt the website, redesigned the logo and launched a social media campaign, all using tools she had to learn how to wield on her own.
“For me, the fourth generation in Watsonville, I see a lot of great things happening in a lot of other places,” Manfre said. “It”s really cool that we”re doing something like this, investing in our kids” future, giving them a safe place and training at virtually no cost to them.”
Digital NEST
What: Nonprofit workspace for youth ages 12-24 to master technology for jobs and entrepreneurial projects.
Who: Founder Jacob Martinez has run computer-based programs at Pajaro Valley schools for nearly a decade.
When: Opening scheduled for September.
Where: Still to be determined location in Watsonville.
