On a recent Friday evening in a back room at the Stanley United Methodist Church in Chattanooga’s Churchville neighborhood, a group gathered to celebrate their completion of a 15-hour workforce development technology course.
The group included a retired firefighter in school for medical billing and coding, a restaurant manager who wanted to better assist her grandchildren with homework and a disabled mother who cares for her disabled son at home and needed a new laptop to track doctor’s appointments and medication.
The class is part of Tech Goes Home, a program that offers technology skills classes and a free Chromebook to students of all ages who want to learn to use the internet to advance their careers, develop good cybersecurity habits, access health care online and generally participate in an increasingly digital society.
The program has been growing rapidly, said Sammy Lowdermilk, the CEO of the Enterprise Center, a Chattanooga-based technology access organization that runs the program. Since the project began in 2015, some 20,000 residents have completed classes in senior centers, churches, schools and community centers across Hamilton County.