The Twitter NeighborNest takes flight

Last night we officially kicked off a new leg of our journey to connect and grow as a community with the grand opening of the Twitter @NeighborNest, which is across the street from our San Francisco offices. Mayor Ed Lee and our CEO Dick Costolo hosted a ribbon-cutting that brought together local residents, community leaders and Twitter volunteers.

What began a year ago as a vision for a place to provide technology access and training has evolved into a welcoming and safe environment to explore possibilities and exchange knowledge — where clients and Twitter volunteers are both teachers and learners.

Along with a family-friendly technology center, we’re excited about having a place to bring the community together to tackle the neighborhood’s complex challenges and find new ways to harness its resilience for a bright future.

Several officials from the City and County of San Francisco (including members of the Citizen’s Advisory Committee from the Central Market and Tenderloin), as well as leaders from At the Crossroads, Boys & Girls Club, Catholic Charities, Compass Family Services, DCYF, DeMarillac, GLIDE, Gubbio Project, Hamilton Family Center, Larkin Street Youth Services, Oasis for Girls, One Degree, St. Anthony’s, St. Vincent de Paul, Tenderloin Neighborhood Development Corporation, Urban Solutions – along with their clients and our colleagues from Spotify and Zendesk. It was wonderful to see a cross section of our neighborhood come together for this community celebration.

We’d like to thank the architects and designers of the NeighborNest, who made significant donations of their time and resources to the project, and Twitter teams including our Workplace and IT groups along with many other volunteers who helped shape the infrastructure, programming and look and feel of the space. These groups include Aurora Development, MG West, Knoll, Hathaway Dinwiddie, Venegas Company, S/I Door & Hardware, O’Reilly & Faina Glass, Giampolinin & Co, Creative, Cox Commercial Flooring, Pribuss Engineering and Convergint Technologies.

This summer, some of the NeighborNest’s programming will include workshops on housing, employment, life skills, digital citizenship, Twitter for nonprofits, and coding for kids, as well as open computer lab time for clients to help strengthen their online skills.

Follow @NeighborNest to keep up to date on the center’s activities and news.