Oakhill Collaborative receives grant for Pi program

Staff report

YOUNGSTOWN

The Ruth Beecher Charitable Trust has awarded a $7,000 grant to the Oak Hill Collaborative, 507 Oak Hill Ave., to support its Raspberry Pi program on Youngstown’s South Side.

The Raspberry Pi program is a youth-driven, STEM program that provides an innovative and inexpensive way to teach teens to build, troubleshoot and program their own Raspberry Pi micro-computer, which is the size of a credit card and plugs into a television.

The little computer can be used in electronics projects and performs many of the functtions a desktop PC does, including spreadsheets, word-processing, browsing the Internet and games.

By the end of the course, students have a device that they have built and programmed themselves, and the device has the capacity to bring the Internet into their homes for free. The technology skills learned through the program offer the students future educational and career opportunities.

The Oak Hill Collaborative promotes economic development and community revitalization through small-business development, neighborhood improvement and beautification, and an innovative Makerspace that serves the Oak Hill corridor, the South Side and the city.