Best Buy Teen Tech Center Opens in St. Paul

Best Buy has opened its sixth Teen Tech Center in the Twin Cities at CLUES, Comunidades Latinas Unidas en Servicio, 797 East 7th Street. There are 32 such centers nationwide.

Best Buy Teen Tech Centers provide a place where teens can develop critical skills through hands-on activities that explore their interests in programming, film-making, music production and design. The Centers address the nation’s opportunity gap by offering teens free, year-round, hands-on technology access and education in an after-school setting. Over the next decade, 77 percent (1.4 million) of all U.S. jobs will require tech skills, yet only 400,000 people will be trained for these jobs. With community-based job readiness resources on the decline, Best Buy is working with local nonprofit partners like CLUES to provide essential access to technology tools and training for underrepresented youth and families.

CLUES is Minnesota’s largest Latino-led agency, founded in 1981 to provide linguistically and culturally relevant services. Its programs connect individuals and families to resources, skills, institutions and opportunities, and it bundles services across Health & Wellness, Economic Empowerment, Educational Enrichment and Arts & Advocacy to meet the complex and interrelated needs of the community. For more information visit clues.org.

In addition, a partnership with The Clubhouse Network connects members to a global community of more than 100 clubhouses in 20 countries. Each Clubhouse provides a creative, safe, and free out-of-school learning environment where young people from underserved communities work with adult mentors to explore their own ideas, develop new skills, and build confidence in themselves through the use of technology.