Desirée Tejero preparing laptops for participants in Hamilton Families’ digital literacy cohorts (Oct. 14, 2021).
Hamilton Families on Medium.com • October 16, 2021 • By Cory Winter
As Hispanic Heritage Month concludes (Sep. 15-Oct. 15), it’s important to recognize that Hispanic champions exist in all forms, not just the notable and celebrated, but the ordinary and everyday individual who is working hard to make tomorrow better for everyone.
Over the past month, you’ve heard from case managers at Hamilton Families discuss the significance of their work with Hispanic families experiencing homelessness in the San Francisco Bay Area. Gabriel Sanchez talked about why trust building and resiliency are more essential than you know when working with Hispanic families experiencing homelessness. Yesenia Magdaleno-Solis highlighted that supporting families means supporting our community and everyone living in it.
But now I’d like to introduce you to someone who is not a case manager but has been supporting families at Hamilton Families in a unique and creative way: Desirée Tejero, a Workforce Development Coordinator at Hamilton Families, who is working on strategic partnerships to improve a family’s ability to re-enter the workforce in this virtual work-from-home era.
Over the past year, Desirée has been working with families to teach and improve their digital literacy skills, partnering with the Community Tech Network. Having taught and graduated two cohorts of digital literacy students so far, Desirée has expanded into a new and ambitious area of this work, starting the first all-Hispanic digital literacy cohort as part of this program. A Spanish speaker herself, Desirée understands in a profound way why digital literacy skills for Spanish speakers are essential if families experiencing homelessness are to truly stabilize and thrive.
I sat down with Desirée to chat about what makes this third cohort so special and what families can expect to receive as part of their enrollment in these digital literacy courses.
Desirée, this is your third cohort of digital literacy students. You must feel incredibly proud of these families’ resiliency while experiencing homelessness and their desire to learn new skills. What can you tell me about this cohort that makes it different from the others?
Desirée Tejero: Apart from another cohort at the Hamilton Families | Shelter that is English speaking, we are running two large cohorts of 15 students each for Hispanic participants. The first one starts on October 18 and the second one begins on November 8.
Other than languages spoken, what else can you tell me about the families that are making up this cohort?
Desirée: Well, the two Hispanic cohorts are composed of Hispanic and Latino family participants and most of them are single mothers living in San Francisco. It’s also important to note that around 90% of participants are beginner-level computer users and some of them have never used a computer before.
And upon graduation from the program, what do participants receive from the course? Since most are beginner-level computer users, I doubt they have the tech they need to go out into the world, right?
Desirée: Exactly! That’s why all participants receive a brand-new Dell Chromebook to attend the classes and once they graduate, they can keep their laptop!
You’re not only equipping them with the skills they need and providing them with a peer-support community they can lean on who all also speak the same language as they do, but you’re also equipping them with a computer that they get to own? It sounds like you’ve made every effort to make sure they succeed! That leads to my next questions, what’s the likelihood that a participant in these courses will succeed?
Desirée: Glad you asked that! Our completion rate for the earlier cohort was a 92% success rate (we had 22 out of 24 participants graduate). For this round, we’ll have a total of 37 participants joining the classes and we always hope that 100% of the participants will graduate the program.
This must be incredibly rewarding work for you.
Desirée: It really is and something I always enjoy is when I call participants to schedule their laptop pickups, they’re always in disbelief that they’ll be able to keep the laptop at the end of the program. They are always so thankful and excited for this opportunity and seem very committed and eager to learn digital skills.
You can learn more about Hamilton Families’ workforce development and digital literacy efforts by downloading the Hamilton Families Q4 Impact Report.