Patrick Cooper, Community Forge’s Director of Education, and Amil Cook, Community Forge’s Director of Technology Education, pick up a donation of 400 smartphones at BBF Global Relief’s warehouse in Pittsburgh, PA.

BBF Global Relief has donated over 400 cell phones to Community Forge, a nonprofit organization that facilitates programs to support community development in Wilkinsburg and the Greater Pittsburgh region. The devices will be donated to local communities in need, including Pittsburgh’s unhoused and refugee populations.

Amil Cook, Community Forge’s Director of Technology Education, and Patrick Cooper, Community Forge’s Director of Education, oversee Building Our Own Technology Uplifting the People (Boot Up), a technology education program that equips youth with essential tech skills for success in the job market.

“Our goal is to help the community pursue their dreams, goals, and aspirations leveraging technology,” Cook says. “People want to upskill; young people want to learn creative arts and media skills—that all involves technology.”

Partnering with the Pittsburgh Public School District, Boot Up has brought BBF-donated Dell laptops and iPads—devices that aren’t readily available in Pittsburgh’s under-resourced schools—into classrooms, so students can learn tech literacy.

Over the past two years, BBF has provided Community Forge with laptops, smartphones, and tablets, equipping hundreds of economically disadvantaged people in Pittsburgh with free devices.

“It can be hard for people who are in poverty to be like, ‘Yeah, I’m actually going to go drop $800 to buy some device,’ even though that device might bring in more than $800 in return. It’s just hard when you’re trying to put food on the table to do that,” Cooper says.  

Providing free devices to people in need has also helped Community Forge build trust with the communities they work in, Cook says.

“[The donations] help people believe more in their dreams, and then they come to us and learn more. We have staff who have benefited from the tech and now work with us and teach other people how to use it,” he says. “It’s really like putting a battery in our back, in the community, and helping.”