A Teenager Shares His Love and Knowledge of Computers

My mom’s an engineer. When I was born, she quit her job and started teaching adult computer-education classes. She taught basic programming classes and she had books and manuals lying all

JACOB KOMAR Age: 15 First (and current) nonprofit job: Director, Computers for Communities, Burlington Conn.

over the house all the time. So I’d been writing small programs since I was 5, just from reading computer manuals.

In school I had always been way ahead of the class. I had always expressed an interest in math and science, and my mom was always looking for ways for me to be advanced. John Hopkins University runs a program called Educational Program for Gifted Youth, with Web-based math programs for kids of all ages. By the end of third grade I had completed the program’s sixth- and seventh-grade math.

I started Computers for Communities by accident when I was 9 years old. I found out that my sister’s school had a bunch of computers that were too old to be used and were being thrown away. I asked the custodian if I could take some of them home to play around with. He said, “Sure, you can take one.” So I took it home and started playing around with it.

When I picked it up, I saw that they had dozens and dozens of computers there. I thought about it, and I figured there’s got to be some kids who don’t have a computer at home. I had always taken having a computer at home for granted. I thought maybe I can help by fixing up these old computers that the school is throwing away and giving them to kids who are less fortunate than me. My upbringing through my parents has always been to help other people whenever you could.

I decided that I needed some way to find kids to give these computers to. I knew someone from church who worked in social services in the next town. I gave her a call and said, “I have some computers that I’d be willing to give away to anybody on your list that needs computers; do you have a need for this?” And she said, “Yes, we have dozens of people on a waiting list for a computer.”

That’s when it really formed, the whole idea of Computers for Communities. I would take computers, and a couple days after school each week I’d go to people’s houses and install the computer, teach them how to use it, the basics of using the mouse and the keyboard, typing up documents and playing games.

I went into my middle school and as an after-school program had kids refurbish computers to give out to people. So I had to come up with a name for the club, and I decided to call it Computers for Communities.

When I started Computers for Communities, I had a pretty good understanding of computers, but I definitely learned a whole lot after that first batch of machines. I had some prior computer knowledge just through friends getting rid of old junk computers and me just kind of tearing them apart and learning how they work on the hardware side. I knew the basics of software.

I did all the refurbishing myself. There’s really two parts to it. There’s the hardware side, making sure that everything is physically working. Then the second part of it is software. Whenever we get a donation, we completely erase all the data on the hard drive permanently, so that it cannot be recovered. Then we go in and install an operating system, and we install software, and whatever else we feel a family could benefit from.

Now that our operations have gotten much larger, we run a prison program where we take computers that are donated to us, mostly by corporations and government agencies, and we bring them to the Cheshire Correctional Institution, in Cheshire, Conn., where inmates are taught to refurbish computers.

In the beginning, when I was going house-to-house distributing computers, that was really great because I could see exactly what this was doing for people. The looks on kids’ faces, and just the absolute gratitude was really awesome. We’re now working with the Hartford public-school system. We send out notices primarily to elementary-school teachers, and we ask them to identify students in their class who they think don’t have a computer at home and could benefit from one. When we get a list of kids, we notify them directly that this is available to them.

Initially the computers I gave away were free. Now we charge $70 for a computer. That price point is really good because even though the cost is not that much, they have a sense of ownership of the computer.

I attend the University of Hartford. On a typical day, I’m in class for between two and three hours. I might spend two or three hours doing schoolwork, and the rest of my day is devoted to Computers for Communities. There’s a lot to do. I provide support for our two branches and our programs. I provide technical consulting as well as new ideas. I also run stuff in the office that I’m looking to expand, like advertising. My mom’s the executive director and she does a lot of office work. She takes care of all of our finances and all of our legal work and paperwork.

The organization and I have won numerous awards for the service work that we do. With that comes quite a bit of press. So for the most part people find out about us through the press we receive. We’re working on expanding across the nation, and setting up local branches in communities all over. We have a start-up manual that I wrote, and it’s exactly all the steps that you need to do to start your own Computers for Communities, like finding space, finding sponsors, finding computers, how to refurbish computers, finding recipients, and things of that nature. A high-school student in Ohio started a local branch. He’s doing extremely well. He has four volunteers that are very active.

We love it when people contact us to start the program in their communities. The idea is that we have Computers for Communities in every community. The digital divide that sort of separates America right now, we hope to close that up and make it so that everyone has access to technology. That’s the goal, to get a computer in every home in America.

I plan to keep Computers for Communities as my organization, at least to the point where we’re national. When I’m done with college, and when I’m done with graduate school, maybe someone else can take it over and run it. I definitely see myself starting a tech company and developing some new technology.