Bellport LINCT Community

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 several years.

Currently, LINCT provides a day and an evening Learn and Earn class, held at St. Joseph the Worker Roman Catholic Church in space donated by the church. Instructors are paid by Patchogue/Medford Adult Education Funding. St. Joseph’s also provides a connection to the Internet. Low-income families benefit from our classes and are given the opportunity to own their own computers to use at home. In this way, doors are opened to them that had previously been closed and many of our students have gone on to be employed in jobs requiring their newly acquired technological skills.

We are also working with the Boys and Girls Club to conduct Computer Refurbishing Classes in this area. We have partnered with them before and are looking forward to educating these boys and girls in the field of technology. The skills that they will acquire will give them a good foundation for being able to be employed in the field of technology.

In the past, LINCT also offered Computer Repair & Refurbishing classes for middle and high school students at one of the local Intermediate schools. At that time LINCT partnered with the Bellport Middle School and the Internal Revenue Service to offer a Computer 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.