Diego Barrera is the Program Director for Youth Expressions Technology and Exploration Center (YETEC). He has worked actively with different community technology services in the grand Miami area for the past ten years serving the needs of our community in the technology field, training hundreds of adult and young students, donating computers to members of the community, helping to set up community technology centers and reducing the digital divide gap in our community.  He studied Chemistry
Engineering at the National University of El Salvador 1981. Afterwards, he went to Mexico to study Computer Technology at Mexico City. Then he came to Miami, Florida, where after completing his ESL Classes in 1991 he registered for Computer Science at MDC.

From 1991 to 1998 he worked with different organization as an IT person, providing technical assistance as network administrator, computer programmer and training staff of many private companies in the Miami and Fort Lauderdale area. In 1998 he got involved with Community Service Programs at Miami Dade Community College where he worked very close with Mr. Joshua Young, Program Coordinator of Service Learning MDC. He also met diverse organizations which provide help and support to low income communities and volunteer organizations in south Florida. From then on, he registered in many organizations as volunteers. One of them was The Florida Association for Volunteer Action in the Caribbean and the Americas, Inc (FAVACA) where, he was selected as volunteer of the year 2002 for his dedication and participation as a volunteer in Jamaica, at Mineral High Elementary School, training a group of teachers and instructors Microsoft Office and Basic computers. Then, Guatemala City at San Carlos University teaching the students how to repair and program computers and how to create websites and learn the basics in the computers’ field.

At the beginning of the year 2000 he started working with a non-profit organization Mattie Koonce Computer Learning Center in the heart of Overtown Miami-Dade. Where, he worked in combination with Miami Dade Community College and Brown University Program Campus Compact. He was responsible for setting up a computer technology center from scratch to a working computer center with twenty-four computers. Training with basic computer literacy and providing internet access to members of the community. By October 2001, he joined e-Equality, Inc. another non-profit organization close to the Downtown Miami area. He was responsible as IT Coordinator. He was in charge of the computer access center and the Intel Club House. In 2004 he started working at the Center for Haitian Studies (CHS) at the middle of Little Haiti as the Program Coordinator of CHS Community Technology Center.

In February 2006, Diego joined the family of Youth Expressions, Inc. as the Program Director of YETEC, where he is in charge of all the activities of this program. He schedules classes, recruits volunteers, writes grants, and is responsible for training the young and adult members of the community. YETEC mission is to create access to computers for all individuals and to reduce the technological inequities experienced by low-income and disadvantaged citizens and small businesses in economically distressed neighborhoods in Miami-Dade County

I was born June 1, 1987 to streets of Miami FL, in Liberty City’s own Scotts Projects. Around age nine my mom married and we moved cross town to Little Haiti. Sometime during junior high I became interested in writing. I would watch my best friend, Chris Leger, write poems and it fascinated me. From then on I began to write poetry which later transitioned into writing music (rap). My passion grew over the next few years and so did my skill. Soon I was carrying and filling rhymes books weekly. I also began teaching myself to freestyle, a talent I am still perfecting. In 9th grade the name Youth Expressions (Y.E.) was first introduced to me by my now fellow alumni Sabrina Abraham. Daily she would speak to Chris and me about YE. A group kids our age interested in music, meeting daily to write music and build together, very attractive, however I was still not convinced. The summer after sophomore year Sabrina invited us to a conference Y.E. was attending discussing the effects of the media and Hip-Hop on youth. I started coming to Y.E. about a week later and have been a member ever since. Currently I am the Creative Projects Coordinator here, in charge of the creation, facilitation, supervision and overall outcome of all creative projects associated with Youth Expressions and it’s counterparts.