Press Release For more information, contact Susan Mernit, ED/co-director, susan@hackthehood.org, (650) 814-9303 Zakiya Harris, co-director, zakiya@hackthehood.org, (510) 759-5326 Hack the Hood one of 4 Google Bay Area Impact Challenge winners: Project empowers 5,000 youth and 25,000 small businesses through tech

June 5, 2014, Oakland, CA--Hack the Hood is one of 4 winners in the 2014 Google Bay Area Impact Challenge. As a winner, Hack the Hood receives $500,000 in Google funding to expand the program in Oakland and replicate its model with partners across five counties in the Bay Area. The program focuses on improving access for low-income people of color to good jobs in tech, and bridging the digital divide by getting local small businesses visible online. Hack the Hood will also receive planning and organizational support from Google, and office space at the Google Impact Lab at Impact HUB San Francisco. According to Google.org, Hack the Hood was one of 4 projects selected by a panel of judges from the Bay Area community out of almost 1000 other non-profit organizations. The panelists included Honorable Aida Alvarez, Chair, Latino Community Foundation and Former

Administrator, US Small Business Administration; Jacquelline Fuller, Director, Google.org; Secretary Norman Mineta, Former Mayor of San José and Former US Secretary of Transportation; Chief Teresa Deloach Reed, Fire Chief, City of Oakland, the Reverend Cecil Williams, Founder and Minister of Liberation, Glide Memorial United Methodist Church and Barry Zito, Major League Baseball Player and Philanthropist. The panelists selected 10 finalists, who then rallied their communities to vote for their projects. The Hack the Hood team built its own voting website to organize supporters, and pushed the call out using social media, garnering support from around the globe. “The level of financial and other kinds of investment that Google is a real game-changer for us, but we are almost more thankful that they pushed us to do this voting campaign. This experience really forced us to step up our game, and resulted in a groundswell of support that we never imagined possible. The people who voted for us now feel a certain kind of ownership over our program, and we are going to work hard to make them proud,” said COO Mary Fuller, who led the social media campaign. Van Jones, MC Hammer, Craig Newmark and web site builder Weebly were among the people and groups helped spread the word during the voting period. In addition to votes, the campaign has resulted in new donations, grants, requests to bring the model to other regions, and an onslaught of offers from locals to volunteer and other forms of support. The project, which launched in October 2012, grew its Twitter follower ten times over during the campaign. “This is such a huge opportunity for us,” said ED/co-director Susan Mernit; “We’re eager to build a model to expand in the Bay area.”

### BACKGROUND Hack the Hood (hackthehood.org) is a program that trains inner city youth ages 16-21 in web development and related tech skills; youth then go out and build mobile-friendly web sites for local small business, work with mentors to build their portfolios and career plans, and visit local tech companies to learn more about tech careers. This $500,000 award is Hack the Hood’s largest grant to date. Supporters include City of Oakland, The Thomas J Long Foundation, Facebook, The Kapor Center for Social Impact, Ask.com, Pandora Media, the Uptown and Downtown CBDs, Impact Hub Oakland, Tech Liminal, the East Bay EDA, and a score of local merchant associations in Oakland, CA. Hack the Hood has an active mentor and volunteer program.

URLS AND SOCIAL MEDIA Google Bay Area Challenge voting site: http://g.co/bayareachallenge

Follow Hack the Hood on Social Media ● Facebook http://facebook.com/hackthehood ● Twitter https://twitter.com/hackthehood ● Flickr: http://flickr.com/photos/hackthehood2013/

About the Center for Media Change Hack the Hood is a project of the Center for Media Change, a 501c3 founded in 2007 that focuses on using media and technology to educate in ways that affect positive social change. Other CMC projects include Oakland Local, a local news site that reaches more than 90,000 local readers every month, mostly based in Oakland and San Francisco, and Live Work Oakland, a site tracking tech startups and business innovators in Oakland, CA through an interactive map and business directory. HACK THE HOOD SPOKESPERSONS Susan Mernit, Hack the Hood CEO, Co-Director Susan Mernit is a nationally recognized journalist, blogger, social entrepreneur, trainer, and educator. A former VP at AOL & Netscape, & former! Yahoo Senior Director, Mernit left Silicon Valley to pursue journalism and mission-driven enterprises. She is the co-founder, editor & publisher of Oakland Local (oaklandlocal.com) a news & community hub for Oakland, CA. Mernit was consulting program manager for The Knight News Challenge, 2008-09; was a 2012 Stanford Carlos McClatchy Fellow; and is a board adviser to The Center for Health Reporting at USC, Annenberg School of Journalism. She has consulted with many non-profit organizations on strategy, product development and social media/engagement, including Salon.com, TechSoup Global, Public Radio International and the Institute for Policy Studies/Economic Hardship Reporting Project, led by Barbara Ehrenreich. Mernit is a nationally recognized trainer and curriculum developer in the areas of web metrics, social media marketing and civic engagement, and making free web services accessible to residents in underserved communities. She is a circuit rider for The Knight Community Information Challenge and a facilitator for The Knight Digital Media Center at The Annenberg School of Journalism, USC. Mernit has been developing curriculum since 1998, and created a program in New York in 2000 at Erasmus High School in Brooklyn, NYC and West High School in New York that taught skills to high school students that was replicated across the city for 3 years. In 2011, she launched Code for Oakland (codeforoakland.org), a one-day tech event focused on building apps to serve Oakland community that repeats yearly. Zakiya Harris, Hack the Hood Chief Education Executive, Co-Director Zakiya Harris is a social change strategist, educator, and artist. She works at the intersection of entrepreneurship, environmental education & creative transformation. Zakiya is a co-founder of the nationally recognized projects Impact Hub Oakland, Grind for the Green, Earthseed Consulting, and a Fellow of Green For All and Bold Food. As a programming strategist for

Impact Hub Oakland, she facilitates support and scholarships to mission driven entrepreneurs dedicated to accelerating possibilities for a better world. Zakiya was recently appointed Director of the Bay Area Hive Learning Network, a regional laboratory that brings together educators, technologists and mentors to design innovative, connected educational experiences for youth. In addition, she is retained as a consultant by a diverse set of leaders managing programs where culturally relevant education and cross sector collaboration are seen as assets. Zakiya’s twelve years of experience in arts and equal access movements includes a combination of management, teaching and presenting at Green Festivals, TEDx Denver Education, Global Exchange and the Youth Leadership Institute, Toyota Motors, Inc., the US Department of Agriculture, the US Department of State Bureau of Cultural & Educational Affairs and the NAACP National Convention. She served as the first African-American Regional Director of the San Francisco Green Festival, received the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights Future Leaders award. She also recently accepted the Tutorpedia Foundation Award for Personalizing Education. Zakiya holds a B.A. in Political Science and History from Rutgers University, and attended New College of Law before leaving to pursue her lifelong passion of teaching. Applying her performance arts talents as a dancer, vocalist and actor, Zakiya has taught culturally and creatively-driven classes to elementary, high school and college students. Currently, Zakiya is preparing for the release of her first solo music project “Adventures of Shapeshifter.” A proud California native, her highest honor in life is being a mother.