826 Valencia was started in 2002, and is essentially a nonprofit tuition centre cum playground, even though its stated mission is to “support students ages 6 to 18 with their writing skills, and to helping teachers get their students excited about the writing”. Its design is amazing: on the outside, it is a pirate shop- but once you go in, it is a classroom. The founder told us it was because the building was supposed to used for retail; thus they had to have a shop in there in order to get it. The proceeds from the shop go to fund the tuition center inside.

The center is essentially run by a few staff, and many, many volunteers. Parents can bring their children in any time for tutoring in math, science and/or (most importantly) writing; it all happens on a free-rolling basis (not set classes). Volunteers drop in whenever they like to tutor the kids, and they ranged from recent college graduates to retirees, and a kindly old man who said he knew Ho Kwon Ping from his Stanford days.

They also had a cool ‘world table’ that displayed google maps on the face of a table. You rolled the table clockwise to zoom in (and vice versa), and moved left and right by tilting the table from side to side. I shot a video of it here:

Upwardly Global on the other hand seeked to train “highly skilled immigrants” and equip them with job skills, and cultural skills to be able to get a job and keep it here. I talked to some of the people there- met people with PhDs who were unable to get a job beyond being cashiers because they spoke English with an accent; also met several Iraqis who were refugees in the USA. One man ran a huge business in his native Peru, and knew more about environmental engineering that the Stanford students; he was only able to get a job at Wal-Mart because of his thick accent.

I couldn’t help but feel that perhaps there should be a similar program for international students like myself. Getting used to the American culture is sometimes a shock; perhaps having a course to equip ourselves with “cultural skills” would be a great help in our integration into America, however short a period that we may be here.

Many of the organizations here are innovative and really awaken you to the number of causes out there one can support. Over the past few days I have met people from Google.org, Upwardly Global, Wokai, Interplast, the Ella Baker Center, Delancey Street, 826 Valencia, and the Draper Richards Foundation.

Visiting them and being able to ask questions about what they do and all has enabled me to see many good ideas about these startups; at the same time I have also been able to see their flaws and their struggles. There are so many ideas here that I can adapt and take back to Southeast Asia, and I will write about this and other realisations at another time (when there is a better internet connection!)