A highlight of 2024 for AT&T Ohio was establishing an AT&T Connected Learning Center with the Boys & Girls Clubs of Central Ohio at their J. Ashburn Jr. Club in Columbus. For months now, dozens and dozens of boys and girls have been making excellent use of the new digital connectivity there. The opening of this Center also gave us the opportunity to get to know the Club’s Director, Georden Burton.
Georden grew up in the Hilltop neighborhood of Columbus where the Club is located, and explained to us that he came back to help connect children who live in that area to greater possibility:
Q: Tell us about the Hilltop, and your motivation to return there after college to help the community.
A: The Hilltop is a neighborhood on the west side of Columbus, Ohio. Despite its negative reputation, it holds a very special place in my heart. Growing up here taught me everything I needed to know about life. My younger brother Garrett and I were students at Highland Elementary, where my mother Patti was a teacher for 20 years. Her compassion and dedication to her students and families were my first introduction to what it meant to truly serve a community.
In August 2008 I lost my brother Garrett to gun violence. He had been a high school junior for 3 days, and I was supposed to start my freshman year at Ohio University a few weeks later. I was lost and broken but navigated college and eventually graduated. I didn’t have a ‘game plan’ or any idea of what I wanted to do for a career.
Georden Burton (right), his mother Patti (center) and brother Garrett (left) in the summer of 2008 outside the building that today houses the Boys & Girls Clubs of Central Ohio’s J. Ashburn Jr. Club where Georden is now Director. The family was celebrating a scholarship Georden received shortly after his high school graduation. Garrett died just weeks later.
My mother suggested that I sign up to work with a summer program in the Hilltop, caring for local youth. It changed my life. I found my calling and purpose, which is serving youth and the community just like my mother had throughout her career. It was – and still is – the only thing that helps me find fulfillment, and an escape from the trauma and depression I had felt. I learned that I can use my rain to water other people’s flowers, by helping them get through similar situations and feelings that I had experienced.
It was also a way to honor my brother, who was an agent of change in his own way when he was alive. He was always doing random acts of kindness, and enjoyed making people smile and laugh. Making a positive impact on someone, big or small, was all I wanted to do moving forward.
Q: How is your work today with the Boys & Girls Clubs making that positive impact?
A: The Club where I am Director sits right next-door to the elementary school my brother and I attended, where our mother taught. I attended programs in the same building where our Club is now located, when I was a child. My work here, and our collaboration with AT&T Ohio, provide valuable resources on a large scale to the families that I care about so deeply.
Today, so many aspects of our society depend on internet connectivity. Many families in this neighborhood do not have internet connectivity on their own. The main reason in most cases is because they can’t afford it. Or even when they can afford it, I know a lot of families that have internet for streaming services but don’t have computers at home.
The AT&T Connected Learning Center at our Club may be one of the few places that our youth and families have access to the internet and computers to do it on. We’ve now been able to tailor some of our programs around topics like digital literacy, typing skills, coding, and e-sports. It sparks an interest in technology at an early age to build upon in the future. I look forward to the impacts we will make in the future as we continue to work together.
