The Community Tech Lab's origins trace back to late 2021, when a foundational partnership was forged between Community Tech New York (CTNY) and El Puente de Williamsburg (El Puente), supported by generous funding from the Ford Foundation and New York Community Trust. This collaboration began with CTNY training El Puente staff through our Digital Stewardship Program. This training included an introduction to Community Technology, the Portable Network Kit (PNK), and the Detroit Digital Justice Principles, which collectively influenced El Puente's commitment to digital equity. The Community Tech Lab is the direct result of this partnership.

El Puente emphasizes elevation through education. The Community Tech Lab represents a significant step forward in the fight for digital equity and is an organizing space for digital justice. The first of its kind in the city, the hands-on tech and digital equity learning space launched in January 2023 at El Puente's flagship Leadership Center in South Williamsburg.

The Community Tech Lab was built at El Puente in response to a need for a tactile learning space and as a solution to the matrix of digital equity issues the community faces. El Puente serves primarily low-income, Spanish-speaking residents with limited access to devices and internet connectivity at home.  Additionally, the community faces risk from flooding, heat waves, and power outages. These circumstances increase an already vulnerable population’s potential for disastrous situations for which there are minimal to no preemptive emergency communication plans. CTNY works together with community organizations to ensure that the skills and tools needed to communicate in this digital age are accessible to residents. To do this, CTNY and El Puente identified the need to create a space where people can discover technology together, learn at their own pace, and learn from people who understand the context of their neighborhoods and communities.

The lab’s work is rooted in connecting conversations to hands-on activities that give people the opportunity to practice collective problem-solving and collaborative programming. Key advantages and benefits of the CTNY-designed Community Tech Lab are:

• people, the anchor organization, and the community developed the Community Tech Lab in response to their recognized need,
• the Community Tech Lab educates the community on all parts of the digital equity spectrum, from basic digital literacy to advanced wireless networking skills to awareness of and responsiveness to digital equity and environmental policy, as well as arts and culture,
• designed to do more than educate in digital literacy and assist with both acquiring internet access and computers: the Community Tech Lab creates community advocates to address social and political policies and issues that impact their community,
• the Community Tech Lab provides a pathway toward workforce development in tech and, prepares and introduces more underrepresented people of color and women to the industry, and
• the Community Tech Lab complements other programs, like the El Puente arts and environmental justice initiatives, and the bike shop, to enhance relevant tech skills.

The History of CTNY

CTNY is recognized as visionary by our funders, such as Ford Foundation, who have supported and believed in our introduction of technology concepts for over a decade. Although our organization was not formally structured as CTNY in 2012, the current staff is a subset of those who founded the Community Technology Collective at that time. We began our engagement by creating and/or introducing the following programs, and CTNY eventually created the Community Tech Lab in 2023:

• 2012 - Digital Stewardship
• 2016 - Community Networks & the Portable Network Kit (PNK)
• 2022 - Community Internet Trust
• 2023 - Creation of the Community Tech Lab
• 2025 - Emergency Preparedness & Long Range (LoRa) Radios

While CTNY has taken many steps into new territory, we proceed with an exploratory mindset and use the Detroit Digital Justice Principles as our guide and measurement for success. The Digital Justice Principles are another visionary element developed by the first Digital Justice Coalition, created in 2009, and with which we are affiliated. At the outset of the Community Tech Lab, we began where we always do, with community input and affirmation of a desire for whatever programs or campaigns we provide. Given the scope of the Community Tech Lab development project, involving designing a physical space, we ventured deeper than a typical community needs assessment. We adopted the use of a different assessment tool, the POP. In the POP assessment, we did an in-depth dive into:

• Purpose: Why? Why are we undertaking this? What is the purpose?
• Outcomes: What are the specific outcomes we want to accomplish as a result of this action?
• Process: What steps will we take to achieve these outcomes and fulfill the purpose?

During the POP process, the significant need for telecommunications technicians surfaced. In a joint letter, eleven different telecommunications industry trade associations asked the Biden administration and Congress to consider funding training for telecom technicians, funding which would also support partnerships with Historically Black Colleges and Universities and Tribal Colleges and Universities. We noted that the industry expected to create 850,000 new technician jobs by 2025 to support wireline and wireless deployments. At the time of the letter, the industry employed 672,000 workers with an average salary of $77,500. Our country was not prepared then to support infrastructure expansion, and neither is it now with emerging AI technology exacerbating the need for CTNY to prompt and prepare communities. This is why we have a focused our efforts to help people move from being consumers of technology to producers of technology.

Creating a Community Haven

The need for a dedicated space organized around digital justice is as acute today as it was when the Community Tech Lab launched in 2023. Shortly after completing the POP assessment, the vision for change led to overwhelming excitement and anticipation for fun! The tasks to build the Community Tech Lab began with finding an appropriate, available space. Overall, the establishment of the Community Tech Lab adequately aligns with each of the 13 Digital Justice Principles and most specifically reflects building “Healthy Communities - Digital justice provides spaces through which people can investigate community problems, generate solutions, create media, and organize together.”

Building the Community Tech Lab entailed the conversion of a storage room. (See Figure 1) Aside from the necessary inclusion of all network equipment and training material, the most fun was derived from making a vibrant, bright, and colorful space that uses theater building props to demonstrate Line of Sight and window painting reflecting the correct positioning of RJ45 ethernet cable for crimping.

Figure 1 Conversion from Storage to the Community Tech Lab

This development did not go unnoticed by the community as the Community Tech Lab earned recognition and awards. Both Community Tech New York and El Puente shape a more open, accessible, and equitable New York City. We were nominated by the community and community votes informed BetaNYC’s first-ever People’s Choice Civic Innovator Award. (See Figure 2)

Figure 2: Receipt of the Beta NYC People’s Choice Civic Innovator Award for the Community Tech Lab

Combating Digital Inequality

The core purpose of the Community Tech Lab is to combat digital inequality within Black and Brown communities. What sets the Community Tech Lab apart is its emphasis on hands-on experience with networking equipment. Participants gain valuable practical skills using proper equipment and networking tools, such as servers, antennas, and routers.

The lab certifies people through its Digital Steward program and utilizes CTNY's PNKs as key teaching tools. The PNK is designed to show people how to set up and maintain their own personal networks, using easily accessible hardware. Crucially, the PNK also doubles as an emergency communication device, allowing for communication and information sharing without the need for an internet connection. CTNY prides itself on having participants leave our training with literal infrastructure and not just a brochure or a notebook.

In its operation from 2023 to date, the Community Tech Lab has hosted over 30 training sessions, 10 community-wide events, engaging more than 500 people, and installed an antenna providing free Wi-Fi at Continental Army Plaza and LaGuardia Playground, which has more than 1000 users each week. We have also had the pleasure of hosting the only AmeriCorps Connection Corps Members in the city of New York for two seasons, and they are both ecstatic about their experiences, growth, and autonomy in deciding how and where they wanted to contribute to tech work. The Community Tech Lab is a shining example of how community-led initiatives are working to bridge the digital divide, add to the workforce, and educate individuals to become stewards today and leaders tomorrow. The lab also reinforces that people’s ownership, whether it's over real estate or the internet, is essential!

Another chapter for the Community Tech Lab will unfold soon. It is with great sadness that I share the temporary closure of the Community Tech Lab in May 2026, but, with great joy, I confirm it will relocate and reopen as El Puente purchases a new space to serve the community.

In New York City, Monique Tate, Co-Director of Community Tech New York, focuses on Community Tech Labs as organizing spaces for digital justice. Tate works with a community-based organization, El Puente, in a majority Spanish-speaking community in the South Williamsburg neighborhood, where just over 20% of people do not have home broadband.

Also see:

From a Devastated Detroit to Community Empowerment in MorningSide

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