Ronald Blackburn-Moreno
President and CEO, ASPIRA

At ASPIRA, we’re all about empowering our youth in America’s Puerto Rican and Latino communities.  We do that through education and leadership development.  And increasingly we do that through broadband.

Since ASPIRA’s founding in 1961, we have provided 250,000 young Puerto Ricans and Latinos with the personal resources they need to remain in school and contribute to their communities.  We develop and nurture the leadership, intellectual and cultural potential of these young people so they are able to contribute their knowledge, skills and heartfelt dedication to the Puerto Rican and Latino communities where they live and work.  We call our young protégés Aspirantes, or those who aspire to grow to be our future leaders.

ASPIRA maintains a rich curriculum of online resources for its centers, facilitators and youth.  Our curriculum is rigorous; our facilitators are vigorous.  A large part of our success is making our training available online at broadband speeds so downloads and interactive on-line sessions for Aspirantes take place real time.  Broadband speeds complement the speeds at which their young minds work, grasp concepts and internalize new learnings.  Anything slower would fail to engage them. 

With broadband access, learning is fun, just like playing a video game.  Where youth might be bored by books made of ink on paper, reading a book online is an exciting adventure.  They crave the technology; it’s fun to them.  Online, they barely notice they’re improving their research, reading and writing skills along the way.

Today’s Puerto Rican and Latino youth are a tech-savvy bunch.  Jupiter Research reports that Internet users who are Latino tend to be younger than those who are not.  This predilection for connection serves us well at ASPIRA because we cater our teachings to broadband technologies.  Broadband access makes ASPIRA’s programs more available to more youth in more places in the electronic media where they thrive. 

ASPIRA’s 150 Community Technology Centers are computer labs with broadband access.  At the centers, in addition to our leadership development on-line curriculum, we also help Aspirantes better learn practical applications, such as desktop technologies, desktop publishing, word processing and others, so they can then integrate the technologies into how they live and work.  We want the technologies to become second nature to them.

Like many other education-centered organizations, ASPIRA recognizes that broadband can make geographical and financial barriers to learning disappear.  Whether you call it e-learning or distance learning or online classroom or digital curriculum or something else, the fact is that broadband opens up a wide range of educational opportunities and resources that previously were inaccessible, particularly to minorities.  The Internet captures all human knowledge in one place, where with broadband it’s accessible and free.  Broadband access can be the great equalizer to bridge the gap to the underserved.

Three out of four Americans connect to the Internet via broadband; last year broadband subscriptions among Hispanics grew nearly 20 percent.  Michael Horn with the Innosight Institute in Massachusetts predicts that 50 percent of all high school courses will be taught online by 2013.  That all adds up to the need for deeper broadband access to richer educational content.

Tomorrow’s leaders need a strong foundation in technology starting today if they are going to have the skills to compete successfully and contribute to their community’s economic future.  At ASPIRA we believe that we are helping to make that happen by immersing our Aspirantes in computer technologies.  We complement the content of our leadership development curriculum with on-line delivery via broadband.  That way technological competitiveness and leadership acumen develop side by side, each strengthening the other.

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