As NERDiT grows, its workforce development program settles in downtown Wilmington

NERDiT Cares, the nonprofit arm of the tech repair and recycling company NERDiT NOW, recently celebrated the graduation of its first NERDiT Academy cohort in the new location at 212 W. Ninth St. The space is a collaboration with The Mill’s Rob Herrera, who has launched two businesses — Faire Cafe, and Girard Craft and Cork — on the same block.

The space, which was once housed Bottlecaps Bar, is not yet fully finished, but Herrera’s clean design style is recognizable. A main classroom where students spend most of their time is in the rear of the space. There are lockers and testing rooms, a conference room and offices for administrators.

A front window area will become a repair shop where customers can come to get anything from a broken phone screen to a desktop computer repaired by NERDiT employees, many of whom will have graduated from NERDiT’s workforce development program, NERDiT Academy.

The Academy is hardware based and hands on. Students both learn device repair and prepare for certifications such as ITF Fundamentals, CompTIA A+ and AWS Cloud Practitioner.

Initially, the program was geared toward young adults, with an age cap around 25. But the pandemic brought a need for workforce development for all ages so that was bumped to age 40, NERDiT Cares Executive Director Jessica Gibson Brokenbaugh told Technical.ly. Then they accepted a couple of applicants who were over 40, too.

Jessica Gibson Brokenbaugh. (Courtesy photo)

Meeting the needs of students, most of whom come from under-resourced backgrounds, is a clear priority over making hard rules. For instance: Students previously fended for themselves on their lunch break, until Gibson Brokenbaugh asked one why he wasn’t going to get lunch, and he casually told her he was fine with waiting to eat until he got home hours later.

“We started offering lunches the next day,” Gibson Brokenbaugh said. “We believe that if we’re intentional about those barriers, we’ll be intentional about the results that we’ll get with our work and provide a sense of hope and a sense of support and a sense of family.”

Students may receive free transportation if they need it, and NERDiT is prepared to offer child care when the need arises. The org helps justice-involved students get their records expunged. Gibson Brokenbaugh has even connected a student to mental health support services.

“I met with every single student and said, ‘What’s your biggest challenge getting to this point?’ And one person said me, ‘My trauma, I think about my experiences often and they make me not want to come here.’ So we immediately hooked him up with some mental health support.”

If it sounds similar to Code Differently’s cohorts that provide what individual students need, it is — in fact, NERDiT Cares and the Wilmington-HQ’d coding bootcamp have started collaborating.

“We’re really synergizing,” said Gibson Brokenbaugh, a 2023 RealLIST Connectors honoree. “We’re looking at some youth prevention programming that’s really unique, very strategic, where they’ll come in and have an option to do a [coding] bootcamp or repair devices.”

For now, Gibson Brokenbaugh is waiting for the finishing touches in the space’s decor while planning for the next cohorts.

And, as always, NERDiT is still growing, with another new project that will increase indoor Wi-Fi access in neighborhoods that need it, potentially coming in the next year.

Watch the NERDiT Cares student-made video about the Academy: