Last week, more than 50 Logitech employees spilled out of a tour bus and filled the MACLA Teen Tech Center on South First Street to celebrate a new partnership.
“We’ve worked with lots of corporate partners before; I have to say that I’m impressed with Logitech as they ‘walk the talk’ and want to be engaged,” said MACLA executive director Anjee Helstrup-Alvarez.
To be more specific, it’s the Best Buy Teen Tech Center, since the consumer electronics retailer currently sponsors the facility, which is physically connected to the offices of Movimiento de Arte y Cultura Latino Americana (MACLA), a decades-long contemporary arts space grounded in the Chicano/Latino experience.
The Teen Tech Center provides free arts education programs for youth ages 11 to 19, so they can learn podcasting, audio mixing, photography and the tools to explore relevant social, personal and community issues while developing their own creative voices. The center has its roots in a collaboration between MACLA, Adobe and the Black Eyed Peas Peapod Foundation, which together spawned the Adobe Youth Voices Academy in 2011. The current incarnation of the Teen Tech Center launched in 2020.
Best Buy already has a relationship with Logitech, itself a San Jose-based company for over 40 years, even as the global headquarters remain in Switzerland. The history of Logitech parallels the very rise of the PC industry in Silicon Valley—one billion mice and counting—so it felt significant that practically the entire North American sales team showed up at First and William to encourage and uplift the teenagers.
First, though, before the ceremony even started, several local partners offered their services in the center for the Logitech employees. Academic Coffee brought drinks. A professional photographer provided free head shots. Artists painted a mural on the far wall. Attendees assembled care kits for the Bill Wilson Center down the street.
When the official event unfolded in MACLA’s black box theater, aka The Castellano Playhouse, corporate honchos and politicos addressed the kids, emphasizing the importance of the arts, especially for those underrepresented demographics who just want a fair shot.
From the stage, County Supervisor Betty Duong spoke highly of her own constituents.
“The youth we serve have passion, they have grit, they have stories to tell,” Duong said. “And oftentimes that narrative is not given to them, that opportunity to change your own narrative, to craft your own stories, is not provided to them, or the tools are not there. So being able to invest in the center is going to give them that resource, that access, to be able to tell their own stories, chart their own path.”
Having the names Best Buy and Logitech on the center means a lot to the students, she added. It tells them that someone believes in their future.
“To me, artists and creatives have always been the truth tellers of history,” Duong said. “We know we need a lot of that right now.”
Then the kids were asked to come forward, so they could stand in front of the stage and hear the next two speakers—Logitech’s head of North America consumer sales and marketing Rob Richardson and director of sales Erin Thompson, both of whom spoke directly to the kids, looking right at them, and not toward the rest of the crowd.
Richardson expressed gratitude for the partnership and thanked the kids for allowing his company to be a sponsor.
“I hope that we can inspire you,” he said, “but I assure you that what we saw in terms of talent, in terms of how enterprising you are, in terms of charging for your talents, being proactive, being salespeople, being marketing people, being great hosts, it just means the world to us.”
Thompson then took the stage and told the kids she was blown away after seeing what they could do with just a few tools.
“It’s a huge privilege for us to help you guys have the tools to do even more, to share your voice, to share your vision, to share your dreams,” she told them. “Thanks for letting us be a part of your journey. We’re so lucky. It’s such a privilege and I cannot wait to see everything that you guys are going to do.”
With the help of Logitech, the kids just might be alright.
