The Urban Apps & Maps Studios initiative at Temple University is connecting urban high school students with digital technology to turn neighborhood problems into civic solutions.

“It’s apps-meets-mapping-meets-design connected to a contextual understanding of community,” said Temple Vice Provost for Research Michele Masucci.

The program, supported by Knight Foundation to help retain talented people and expand opportunity in Philadelphia, offers yearlong and summer internships to reduce the “digital creativity gap” by preparing the next generation of urban civic entrepreneurs. Urban Apps & Maps was born out of the ongoing research program Building Information Technology Skills. Interns receive an hourly rate of $7.25.

“As digital technology continues to develop, the gap will be always there, unless we start focusing on the ‘creation’ side of the gap,” said Urban Apps & Maps Studios founder Youngjin Yoo.

The interdisciplinary initiative is the only program that touches every division of the university. It brings together Temple’s research and education capacity with community members in North Philadelphia, local K-12 schools, government, nonprofit organizations and businesses to propel urban innovation using digital technology.

Each year 30 Temple students, from freshmen to Ph.D. candidates, serve as mentors, who must complete a four-week long training program. The initiative serves 150 high school students annually, mostly African-American youth from North Philadelphia.  In four years, the program has worked with more than 600 youth, producing over 30 concepts and prototypes that deal with urban issues.

“I am able to develop a wide variety of websites and am constantly learning new languages,” says 12th-grader Paul Bowen who participated in the summer program for three years.

Bowen now mentors and teaches other youth how to build websites.

“Some of our students who [have] never done any coding are now working on … a next generation digital health service delivery platform to fight youth obesity, collaborating with designers and engineers from Samsung Electronics,” said Yoo.

“Another group of students are working with engineers from Comcast to enhance the functionality of Comcast’s EveryBlock, a hyperlocal community engagement platform,” which was one of the first Knight News Challenge winners.

For 17-year-old Nick Akatsuke,who participated last summer, the experience he gained goes beyond introducing skills necessary for a job in tech.

The “Apps & Maps program has changed my life by introducing me to a new way of thinking,” he says. “I wouldn’t consider myself to be in the ‘tech field’ but I must think as someone in the tech field and build solutions around problems.”

Nashetah Tucker, now 21, interned in the program in 2013.

“[It] definitely taught me skills like building resumes, applying for college and jobs, editing videos and learning about the city,”said Tucker, who is now a social work major at East Stroudsburg University.

The program ventured into new territory in 2014 with the successful piloting of Hip-Hop Academy, which uses hip-hop to teach STEM.

“During the program we got the chance to meet photographer artists who taught us how to take pictures,” said 12th grader Malika Worthy-Brown who hopes to become a restaurant owner. “It kept me busy over the summer and I was getting paid to do all that.”

Yoo makes it clear what makes him most proud.

“The greatest achievement of Urban Apps & Maps program is something that we cannot see directly,” he says. “That is what happened to the inside of these young boys and girls: the realization that they are empowered to think about creating a new future in a way that nobody has ever thought about.”