Tired of facing shortages of qualified workers and spending billions on training, Corporate America is teaming up with schools in new efforts to close the "digital divide" - and prepare kids for work in the real world.
From the time he steps out of the Metro station in Anacostia on his way home from high school, Kevin Robinson is in a hurry.

The ninth grader hurries because the day is cold. He hurries because his Washington, D.C., neighborhood is across the Potomac River and far away from the amusements downtown. He hurries because he fears the teenagers and young men who gather in the parking lots and at the corners.

But mostly he hurries because he's worried he won't get enough time online before the community center in the basement of his parents' subsidized apartment building closes for the night. Kevin wants to be an automotive engineer when he grows up, and he now spends much of his free time using the Internet to check out colleges and look up sites where he can sharpen his math skills and practice taking the SAT.

Kevin is luckier than a lot of the kids who live in Anacostia. The neighborhood of low-rise apartment blocks is renowned for one of the worst crime rates in the country. Yet it was just this environment that attracted a new organization named PowerUP to locate one of its pilot projects here, in the Southern Ridge Apartments. A partnership among some of the world's largest high-tech companies and leading inner-city community groups, PowerUP has equipped the center with 18 geared-up Gateway PCs, and the latest and fastest links to the Internet. The children and teenagers who are members get free tutoring, free snacks, and free AOL accounts.