Community

Rooted locally.
Connected globally.

Every YTC club starts by building community at home. Then, when the students are ready, they connect with other students across cities and countries.

Rooted locally

First, they support their own city.

Students support their own school, teach younger students, and build their own culture of learning and leadership. In Evanston, that has meant: computer labs built for seniors at Blake Manor and Primm Towers, with monthly lessons ever since. Refurbished machines for shelters, community centers, and schools. STEM mentoring for Fifth Ward middle-schoolers and Camp Kuumba campers. A technology pilot with the Evanston Haitian Congress.

And when Hurricane Katrina hit, six members traveled to New Orleans, processed 40+ computers, and launched two brand-new clubs — labs in a school and a church.

ETHS YTC students and mentors on the steps in New Orleans, where they launched two new clubs after Katrina
Connected globally

Then the world gets a little smaller.

Since 2009, ETHS students have mentored peers in Ethiopia, Namibia, and Mozambique — first over video, building on groundwork laid by Namibian educator Eslien Tsuses, and then in person: eight students taught in Namibia in July 2025.

Global need creates an opportunity for service — but global partnership creates mutual growth. Students here gain empathy, patience, communication, and leadership by helping others. Students elsewhere gain access, relationships, and the chance to become mentors themselves.

Eventually, every community becomes both a learner and a contributor.

Volunteer & mentor

The club runs on people who show up.

Mentor

Share what you know

Engineers, IT professionals, makers, alumni: mentor a refurbishing or robotics bench — in person, or over video the way our students mentor Africa. One hour a month genuinely matters.

Volunteer

Power the logistics

Drive donated equipment, host a collection drive, help at Titanium Tech and showcase events, or feed a room of teenagers who just refurbished forty computers.

Visit

Share a career hour

One visit to talk about your work shows a fifteen-year-old where this road can lead. Cybersecurity, mechanical engineering, IT — our alumni are proof the message lands.

Volunteer — email us →

Community partners

Who stands with the club

Teaching partner · 2026–27

Georgia Tech CONFIRM

Georgia Tech students teach this year's robotics instruction — college engineers bringing university-level work to the club bench. CONFIRM Formal program/club name.

Mentorship partner · 2026–27

Drexel University CONFIRM

Drexel students mentor the refurbishing benches — hands-on guidance from engineers a few years ahead. CONFIRM Program details.

Summer partner

Camp Kuumba

Evanston's summer program for young Black men — YTC brings STEM, robotics, and refurbishing into its sessions each summer.

Host institutions

ETHS · Blake Manor · Primm Towers

The club's home since 2009, and the senior residences whose student-built labs anchor its longest-running service commitment.

Emerging initiative

Northwestern University

An emerging initiative in early conversations — not yet an existing program. CONFIRM One accurate sentence on current status before this goes live.

Become a partner →