High school students in San Jose help local businesses create online presence

SAN JOSE, Calif., (KRON) — A group of high school students in the South Bay are assisting local small businesses who don’t have an online presence stay afloat amid the COVID-19 pandemic by helping them create their own website.

Elevate the Future, a nonprofit created by four San Jose high school students are helping small businesses owners create a website as away to help them remain open amid the pandemic.

Rayan Garg of Archbishop Mitty High School and Arjun Gupta of Lynbrook High School along with two fellow classmates Keshav Pradeep and Ishir Vaidyanath started “Elevate the Future,” a nonprofit to provide students computer science and business classes.

“I really want to help because I want to help these students continue their learning, especially as they have more time now,” Garg said. “I feel that businesses without an online presence are especially facing difficulties during this time … we hope that by providing them with a website we can help them stay afloat.”

Elevate the Future is collaborating with the Silicon Valley Chamber of Commerce and Cupertino Chamber of Commerce to help mom and pop businesses create a website for takeout meals by coaching and teaching students web developments skills used to create a site.

The nonprofits experienced instructors work with local businesses to understand what they would like to see on their website — continuing to work with owners until they are happy with the final product.

At this time the nonprofit is working with four local businesses to help them get through tough economical times as shelter-in-place orders continue.

Despite COVID-19 forcing the nonprofit to cancel many of their classes and events they have been able to transition online and host several Global Entrepreneurship Summits.

“We have held virtual business classes for students around the world along with virtual classes for web development as part of our initiative to provide small businesses with websites,” Garg said.

Elevate the Future launched a year ago and has grown extensively since then — starting up 22 chapters across the world with over 200 volunteers.

If you are a small business and need help you can email Elevate the Future at contact@elevatethefuture.org

For students who are interested in free summits, Elevate the Future has a few events coming up int he month of May.

List of events/summits: