All Aboard
They say that many residents who move out of the Nickerson Gardens housing project in South-Central Los Angeles never look back.
But there was Joseph Loeb, the 45-year-old founder and president of Break Away Technologies, returning to his childhood stomping grounds to fulfill a mission more than three decades after his family left.
Loeb brought a couple of young technology wizards to set up a computer lab at the Sage day care center. Eventually, the computers will be linked to the Internet.
“We need to make sure we are on board the train, the technology train,” he said. “Anyone who is not familiar with the Internet in the next few years will be on the losing end.”
For years, Loeb had a broad, unformed vision of linking up children with technology. But then, with the 1992 riots, things changed, and he methodically turned himself into a computer-slinging Johnny Appleseed.
Today, his company--which has 17 full- and part-time employees and about 25 volunteers--is busily refurbishing and installing hundreds of computers in poor L.A. neighborhoods, from Bible study groups to homeless shelters.
The project at the Sage center in Nickerson Gardens is one of nearly two dozen labs that Loeb’s company has set up in recent months as it moves toward an ambitious goal of establishing 200 computer learning laboratories throughout the state by the end of 2000.
His big break came earlier this year when Sony Pictures Entertainment donated 750 outdated computers that would otherwise have been sold to a dealer of used equipment. Then Microsoft pumped in nearly $1 million in software for upgrades. Other promises of money and help have come from AT&T;, Allstate Insurance, the Strome Family Foundation, USC Annenberg School for Communication and the Pacific Southwest Regional Technology in Education Consortium.
To understand how Loeb got here, you have to go back six years.
At the time, Loeb said, he was searching to find meaning in his life. He had owned a trucking company, had worked in data processing and had even been a preacher on skid row. (To this day he is an associate minister at West Angeles Church of God in Christ.) Quietly, he dreamed of starting a computer school to introduce young people to the too-often alien world of technology, but the dream needed a spark to get things started.
Then came the riots.
“Seeing the fires, smelling the smoke, hearing the sirens and sensing he frustration” made him feel “something had to be done, and technology was an important way to get something done,” he said from his 15,000-square-foot office on Jefferson Boulevard.
Loeb understood that technology broke down racial barriers. He had first gotten a hint of that as a teenager growing up in Southwest Los Angeles watching an African American actor named Greg Morris play an electronics expert in episodes of “Mission Impossible.”
When a company’s computers crash, he said, “they don’t care about the color of the person who comes to fix it--technology is a level playing field.”
“I didn’t want to wake up after a few years with the feeling that there was something I could have done to help and didn’t do it.”
He sold his ’82 Porsche for $10,000, cleaned out his garage in the Leimert Park section of the Crenshaw district, and built a 10-station computer lab for neighborhood teenagers. From these humble beginnings, Break Away grew, eventually taking over the Jefferson Boulevard office in a former Union Bank building.
It expanded slowly, upgrading outdated computers, offering Internet classes, a 24-hour online radio service, and a drop-in computer center where, for a small fee, nearby residents can surf the Net. In all, some 5,000 students have come through Loeb’s programs, he said.
Sony, looking for a way to reach out to minority community groups, found Loeb a handy vehicle.
“The alternative was to give the computers to a used-computer dealer,” said Ted Howells, a Sony executive vice president. “No one benefits from that except someone who turns a couple of dollars on the deal.”
Through online communication, AT&T; saw a way to reinvent the act of volunteering, said Marcy Chapin, vice president of AT&T; Foundation, which contributed $100,000. She envisioned a system in which AT&T; employees could volunteer online to mentor children and “no longer be limited by schedules and face-to-face meetings.”
One of Break Away’s goals is to use the growth of technology to create new job opportunities in minority communities.
“It doesn’t make sense [for American companies] to send programming jobs to India and Pakistan when there are thousands of people who could do the work right here,” said Charles Harriford, a retired engineer who worked for IBM for 29 years and is now a Break Away consultant.
The job of teaching those skills begins in places like the Sage center in Nickerson Gardens, where none of the 100 children, ages 5 to 12, have access to a home computer, said Cathy Tate, the center’s director.
Although the center’s newly upgraded system of 15 computers is not fully operational, Tate said, she already sees the children making strides.
“Right now the children are writing stories, doing math problems and playing games,” she said. “They can use the mouse to go to the icons to turn on the programs.”
Soon the children will be using the system to go onto the Internet, but they won’t be the only ones. The center’s staff and community residents will have access to the system.
“The parents are very excited,” Tate said. “They want to know when they will have an opportunity to get some training. Our long-term goal is to open the computer lab to everyone so that parents can use it to look for jobs and older children can do homework assignments.”
One of the workers doing the installation was Alex Castanedez, a 16-year-old Crenshaw High School senior. Castanedez enjoys setting up computer stations but his real love is making World Wide Web sites for organizations.
The key to creating a professional Web site is knowing “what is pleasing to the eye, informative and easy to find,” he said.
Loeb hopes that teenagers like Alex influence younger children, such as a 9-year-old boy named Reginald who played math games on a computer nearby.
“I play every day,” Reginald said.
To Loeb it was another small sign that more children are getting on board the train.
