AT&T ‘Cuse Youth Digital Ambassador Program Held for Second Straight Year
August 6, 2024
By Tyus Sansbury
Syracuse, N.Y. (NCC News) — Fifty local students from fourth and fifth grade graduated from the second annual Youth Digital Ambassador program on Friday.
AT&T, Tech4Kids, and Syracuse University held their second AT&T ‘Cuse Youth Digital Ambassador Program.
Throughout the week, the students were taught a variety of skills such as coding basics, keyboarding skills, artificial intelligence, robotics, internet safety, and among other things to teach digital literacy.
The students started on Monday and finished on Friday to showcase their individual projects. To the kids’ surprise, each of them were rewarded with new laptops courtesy of AT&T.
The AT&T Director of External Affairs, Kevin Hanna, stresses why this program is valuable.
“To teach them about how there are many opportunities as they become adults as they begin to think about the future, all the different things they can do in a technology field. Not everyone has to be a computer programmer. There are many other jobs out there and careers where having technical knowledge is extremely important.”
The partnership aims to address equality issues in technology education and to help local students impacted by the digital divide by providing technology skills, digital literacy and online safety in a fun and innovative way.
AT&T’s support of the program is part of its nationwide commitment to address the digital divide and bring digital literacy education.
AT&T is committing 5 billion dollars to help 25 million people get and stay connected to the internet by 2030.
This program will give kids the ability to become technology savvy at an earlier age and even potentially hep parents of these kids to become comfortable with technology as well.