Custom Skills Curricula & Training - Project Spotlight 1

One Year Later: The Impacts of Digital Literacy Skills Training on Hispanic Households

In 2022, Maribel Martinez Consulting partnered with UnidosNow to provide free digital literacy skills training classes in Spanish to 18 Hispanic immigrant households with school-age children. One year later, thanks to support from The Patterson Foundation and continued collaboration with UnidosNow, 9 of those participants were interviewed to learn about the long-term impacts, if any, that digital literacy learning opportunity had on their daily lives and their families. 

In this report you’ll learn about:

  • Hispanics’ representation in the workforce and their present digital literacy competencies

  • How the digital divide affects Hispanic households and how Hispanics interact with the internet and devices

  • How the children of immigrants make use of the internet and devices in comparison to other ethnic groups and races

  • What effects are present one year after participants were given access to vital digital literacy skills in their home language 

  • Recommendations for engaging with Hispanic households

  • Recommendations for closing the digital divide among Hispanics

  • Unforgettable anecdotes and opinions from Spanish-speaking families experiencing the digital divide

Custom Skills Curricula & Training - Project Spotlight 2

Digital Skills Training for Spanish-Speaking Parents

Having designed and implemented digital skills curricula that has been successfully adopted in over 30 cities and counting since 2017, Maribel Martinez Consulting is proud to work with UnidosNow, a 501(c)3 organization that empowers Latinos to achieve their American dream by facilitating grants, educational programming, and post-secondary guidance and support for Spanish-speaking parents and their K-12 students so that school, work, and community participation are within reach.

Building on a 2021 #BuildCodeGo workshop where UnidosNow students in grades 3-8, together with their parents, built a computer, learned basic code, obtained access to free productivity tools, and took their computers home free of charge, UnidosNow and Maribel Martinez Consulting partnered again in 2022 to offer specific digital skills training in Spanish to 18 households. The consultant created a custom plan for digital skills classes based on parent surveys and interests. Parents joined intensive classes in person as well as virtually and earned 24 digital badges on specific digital tools.

Custom Skills Curricula & Training - Project Spotlight 3

Cloud Computing Training for Students in Grades 3-9

Building on the successes of Digital Skills Training for Spanish-Speaking Parents, UnidosNow and Maribel Martinez Consulting partnered on their third collaboration to offer cloud computing training to the children of parents from the Spanish-speaking classes, as well as other students UnidosNow served. Based on UnidosNow’s work in local schools, as well as on the experiences of Maribel Martinez in schools across the country, a custom cloud computing curriculum was designed for students in order to help them maximize the use of their computers, to learn highly sought after cloud computing skills around digital drives, conducting internet research, identifying bias and credible sources, and using time management tools. All students demonstrated measurable improvement with the learning objectives and they were able to demonstrate their skills on shared and individual digital projects which they then presented.