Project H.O.M.E‘s mission is to empower people to break the cycle of homelessness. As part of their numerous educational and professional development programs is the John and Sheila Connors Youth Employment Program. Every summer, along with offering academic workshops and professional development classes, Project H.O.M.E places students into local businesses and city agencies for six-week, 20-hour per week internships. At these positions, students are exposed to business practices and professional activities they might not have otherwise. It is in this context that Azavea welcomed Tyreek Elam into our Philadelphia office this summer.
Why? One of our core principles is to do work that is meaningful and encourages positive changes in the communities our clients serve. Welcoming Tyreek amongst us seemed like a tangible and meaningful, albeit small, way to make a positive impact in the life of someone from our community. During one of our Management Team meetings, I presented the idea and we all voted unanimously that Tyreek should join us for his internship. This is his account of his stay with us. It is my hope Tyreek will remain in touch with us. We all wish him the best as he prepares to apply to college and develops his professional career.
“Though I was only here for six weeks, these six weeks were some of the most wonderful six weeks, I have had in my entire life. My internship with Azavea was amazing, everyone in the office was kind, helping, and just plain, awesome. I have never seen a place so vibrant, everyone is almost always busy working with something but when you go and ask them something there is never a bad atmosphere about them. Each week I was assigned a different team and a different assignment, and as a result more insight on what Azavea had to offer.
The first week I worked with the Law Enforcement team, consisting of Bennet, Jeremy, and Kenny, as a beta tester, using a demo of their HunchLab product to find any problems or bugs in the software. I greatly enjoyed the application as well as the way they explained things to me. HunchLab is a web-based geographic crime visualization, early warning, and risk forecasting software. HunchLab and the team developing it were so great that at the end of the week I reluctantly had to go.
But the fun did not stop there, the next week was the Cicero team, with Abby, Andrew, and Daniel. During my week with Cicero, which is an address-based legislative district matching and elected official look up web API, I gathered and entered data about previous elections for various countries. That was definitely a challenge, an interesting challenge, considering how little is known about a lot of old elections for a lot of countries.
The next week I was placed with the PhillyHistory / Sajara team, which consists of Deborah and Carissa. PhillyHistory.org offers a geographic search, mapping and display of historic assets in Philadelphia. This was also one of my favorite weeks because I really enjoyed surfing through all the historic photos they had of the city I live in. The entire week was spent with me going through the pictures and recording data, but the pictures I saw made me feel closer to Philadelphia.
The next week I worked with the DecisionTree team helping them install Ubuntu, which was awesome and gave me a feel for Ubuntu and an OS other than the Windows or Mac OS X. I really enjoyed how Tamara, Josh and Erik, let me get a feel for the software and the OS on my own but were there to help me when I stumbled or, was stuck.
My last week, I was with the Land Records team and worked on their PWD Stormwater Billing Application. Though I knew very little about the application it was still fun. I was assigned with the task to find ways to break or hack the web app so they could fix it. Matthew and Justin were extremely helpful when it came to parts of software that I found that did not work or had some bugs.
Overall my time here at Azavea was a great one and I wish I could do it again. Everyone was approachable and reasonable, but I would like to personally thank Ms. Rachel, because my stay there was twice as wonderful because of her. She always made sure I had what I needed, if I needed more of anything, if I was making out okay, and if there was ever anything that she herself could not help me with she tried hard to find someone that could.” – Tyreek Elam
