Emely Sarceno Bravo

Hello Dev/Mission family! We are thrilled to share the momentum our Spring 2026 cohort built throughout March. From hands-on PC “break-and-builds” in the classroom to site visits, our trainees are fully immersing themselves in the field.

This month, our pre-apprentices got “under the hood” for an exciting PC teardown and rebuild session! For most of our trainees, this was their first time handling the internal components that power the digital world. Trainees gained hands-on experience identifying motherboards, CPUs, and RAM.

It was exciting to see them handle tech from the inside out. We are so proud of their growth as they master these essential hardware skills!

Our cohort spent a day at Wells Fargo for a “Hands-On Banking” experience. Trainees tackled real-world budgeting challenges, navigating expenses such as groceries, transportation, and utility bills to build essential life skills! We truly believe career readiness means having confidence in your finances just as much as your tech skills.

We are incredibly grateful to Wells Fargo for hosting such a practical and informative workshop for our pre-apprentices. It’s one more way we’re ensuring our youth are fully prepared to step into the tech industry!

Our cohort also went to Verizon’s Innovation Lab to learn about the emerging technologies shaping our world. From VR to 5G applications, our trainees saw innovation in action and understood how these tools are transforming the tech field. 

We are so grateful to the Verizon team for having us and for creating an engaging and educational experience for our young adults. Special thanks to Dan Setterby, Ian Ramskov, Irene Mak, Christine Keener, Venkatesh Konanur, and Alina Boltunova for leading the tour, sharing insights, and inspiring our cohort.

We are thrilled to announce the launch of our AI Media Literacy Pilot Program! Over the next six weeks, our trainees will dive into the world of Artificial Intelligence, exploring how models are trained and gaining hands-on experience with object recognition. These workshops will empower our youth to understand how to leverage AI ethically in their future careers.

We want to thank our passionate volunteers for leading these workshops and sharing their expertise. We can’t wait to see our trainees master these skills!

This month, we also celebrated the graduation of cohort #20! The students joined the BDL classes with limited tech experience but left with the confidence to navigate the digital world. We are inspired by their growth and dedication over the past few weeks. Every graduation brings us one step closer to closing the digital divide!

If you or someone you know is interested in gaining basic digital literacy skills, make sure to sign up! The classes will be in Spanish for our next cohort.

We launched a Volunteer Highlight Series to celebrate the incredible Google volunteers and mentors who power our mission. These highlights showcase the impact of our volunteers and mentors and how they guide our trainees through their technical journeys. We are so grateful for the dedication of our volunteers!

If you or someone you know is passionate about shaping the next generation of tech leaders, we invite you to join us!

Hello Dev/Mission family! Take a look at what we have been up to in February: from our Pre-Apprenticeship program to our BDL classes, to our Refurbathon, and more!

Cohort #34 will be wrapping up their first month soon! So far, they have been introduced to IoT and are starting to program Arduinos in C++, getting familiar with computer hardware components, learning about programming fundamentals such as HTML and CSS, and professional skills to help prepare them for their professional journeys! 

Over the next two months, they will continue to build their hands-on skills, gain mentorship, and career support to launch their career in the tech industry. 

This month, we celebrated two of our cohorts! 

• Cohort #18 graduated on February 9th
• Cohort #19 graduated on February 5th

We are so proud of how far they have come! They came to Dev/Mission with very little knowledge of how to navigate a computer, but they left feeling more confident than ever. Over the course of 8 workshops, our students learned how to perform basic troubleshooting, be more secure online, and use powerful tools such as Google Docs and more!

Make sure to sign up for our next BDL Classes, which will be in Spanish!

Last week, on February 27th, we had a refurbathon at Dev/Mission HQ. It was an amazing opportunity for community members to gain digital literacy skills with our team, including learning to type on a keyboard, staying safe online, and more!

In addition to the essential skills they learned, they also received a free refurbished laptop, on which they will practice the skills they learned with us!

Hello Dev/Mission family! Hope you all had an amazing start to the new year! We’re excited to share with you everything we’ve been up to this month. So let’s get right into it with our January 2026 Newsletter!

Our Spring 2026 Interns!

They are just getting started, and we are looking forward to all they will accomplish ahead! Over the quarter, they will be supporting our community through hands-on IT work, device refurbishments, and media projects that help share our mission.

They will also get hands-on experience in their roles, seeing firsthand how each position is vital to keep our organization running. By learning and contributing to real-world projects, they will gain valuable skills and experiences along the way that will allow them to grow. 

California Broadband Council: The Community Spotlight

Our Executive Director, Leo, was honored to speak in front of the California Broadband Council (CBC) last Friday, January 23rd, as “The Community Spotlight,” which took place at the Sacramento County Board of Supervisors!

He shared how our graduates from our program become Community Technology Ambassadors, providing free tech support, digital literacy workshops, and computer distribution inside affordable housing communities.

We are super thankful to the California Broadband Council and the entire team that made it happen so that Leo could speak about Dev/Mission’s Registered Pre-Apprenticeship Program!

Refurbishing Center: Impact Report

Bridging the digital divide takes a village, and these numbers represent more than just hardware. They represent pathways to new opportunities, higher education, and stronger connections! 

The breakdown of our refurbished devices:

• Refurbathon Events: 232
• Pre-Apprenticeship: 187
• Spanish BDL Classes: 138
• English BDL Classes: 70
• Digital Music Lab: 9

Total: 636 !!

This would not have been possible without our incredible team of 7 IT Technicians, who put in the hard work every single day: Nico Carillo, Jorge Jimenez, Raymundo Portillo, Austin Hui, Ameeya Broussard, Nick Medina, and Ruby Singer. 

A massive thank you to our corporate partners and donors for providing the tech that fuels our mission: Veritas | SFPL | Patreon | Comcast | Udacity | McAfee | Codenation 

Hear From Our Recent Alumni Who Are Making Their Mark In The Tech Industry

True impact goes beyond graduation day. Catch up with our alumni to learn about their journeys within the technology field: from their first spark of curiosity in our classrooms to the careers they are pursuing today.