News Release
January 22, 2007
Computers for Families receives 40 computers from Community West Bank
Community West Bank, a local, eighteen-year-old organization with five branches located in the tri-counties, donated 40 computers to the Computers for Families Sustainability Fund. Once the computers are checked by youth at Los Prietos Boys Academy who are learning valuable job skills while giving back to their community, the computers will be quickly placed in the homes of local fourth and fifth grade students.
Computers for Families (CFF) has for nine years provided students from low-income families with computers, Internet access, and training, in an effort to eliminate the digital divide between families that can afford computers for their children and those who cannot. The goal of the sustainability fund is to make CFF self-sufficient by establishing a $4 million endowment to fund the program’s annual budget of $200,000.
A group of financial leaders, including Lynda Nahra, CEO and president of Community West Bank, has stepped forward to lead the effort to raise additional monies needed to fund Computers for Families in perpetuity in all of the Santa Barbara County south coast schools. Nahra also sits on the Partners in Education Board of Directors, which oversees the Computers for Families fund.
“It just makes sense for companies like ours to donate their old computers that may no longer be useful for them but are still very functional for the children of our community,” said Nahra.
“It is through the generous support of companies like Community West Bank that this vital program can be sustained,” said Santa Barbara County Superintendent of Schools Bill Cirone. “Through Community West’s annual computer donations, its on-going financial support and Lynda’s unwavering leadership, I am extremely encouraged about the success of Computers for Families. I believe that the program will meet its objectives and thrive well into the years when today’s fourth grade recipients reach adulthood.”
Computers for Families, a joint project of Santa Barbara Partners in Education and the Santa Barbara County Education Office, seeks to eliminate the negative consequences of the digital divide by providing students from low-income families with refurbished computers, Internet access, and training. Related program goals include improving the computer literacy of students and families, helping teachers develop computer and Internet-based programs, and helping juvenile offenders obtain computer repair skills and ultimately good jobs by training them to refurbish and repair the donated computers. Since its beginning in 1997, Computers for Families has placed more than 5,000 computers in the homes of local students.
Community West Bancshares is a financial services company with headquarters in Goleta, California. The Company is the holding company for Community West Bank, which has five full-service California branch banking offices, in Goleta, Ventura, Santa Maria, Santa Barbara and Westlake Village. The principal business activities of the Company are Relationship banking, Mortgage lending and SBA lending, with loans originating in California, Alabama, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, Oregon, South Carolina, Tennessee and Washington.