Bellport, about 50 miles west of Greenport is also a “coastal” community with a very affluent section close to the water and a much poorer section to the north.  LINCT has been providing Learn and Earn classes in Bellport for about 2 years.  Here, our partner is the Boys and Girls Club (formerly called Bellport Area Community Action Center).  The Boys and Girls Club has helped us locate space for classes in the community and recommends participants. 

Currently, LINCT provides a day and an evening Learn and Earn class, held at a local church, using instructors paid by Patchogue/Medford.  For the past two summers, LINCT has also offered Repair & Refurbishing classes for middle and high school students at one of the local Intermediate schools.  During the past school year LINCT partnered with the Bellport Middle School and the Internal Revenue Service to offer a Repair and Refurbishing class in conjunction with the school/IRS after school mentoring program. 

In this program, the IRS supplied used computers, the children and their mentors (volunteers from the IRS) learned to refurbish, coached by a LINCT adult graduate-turned-volunteer.  In this way, 10 “at-risk” 8^th graders were rewarded for their participation in the mentoring program and their skill in refurbishing by earning a computer for their home.  The program is expected to continue next as the next group of students become 8^th graders.  Eventually, we hope to get the youngsters refurbishing many more computers which will become the computers for the Learn and Earn classes and mentoring the 6^th and 7^th graders as well.

An exciting variation on our theme will be offered beginning this summer in conjunction with Bellport High School’s Alternative High School program.  There, we expect to recruit from the teen parent population who will enroll in a Learn and Earn Class beginning in the summer and continuing through the fall semester. Students will have the opportunity of earning not only their computers but credits toward a High School Diploma as a result of participation in the class.  We also hope to use the class as a forum to expose these young parents to the importance of family literacy for their children.