Brass City Gamers Tournament’s mission is to educate our local community in STEM learning including digital media, gaming, coding, and information technology, our aim is to foster strong computer competency skills to prepare for the developing new-collar jobs of the 21st Century.
We are a 501c3 nonprofit organization located in Waterbury, CT. We provide our local community esports tournaments for charity and fundraising purposes to raise awareness on social issues. Additionally, we collaborate with our local library to provide after STEM related after school programs to our local students and parents. We hosted numerous tournaments with the students of the Waterbury UConn Campus and students from Naugatuck Valley Community College (NVCC).
My name is Hector Navarro, and I am 36 years old. I was born into poverty in Puerto Rico. When I was eight years old, my mother moved to Massachusetts with me and my 3 younger siblings.
Two years later we moved to Waterbury, CT where I attended the public school system. When I turned 17, I wanted to become a game developer. However, the school I wanted to attend indicated that my mother made too much money for me to receive financial aid. They never took into consideration that my mother was a single mother with multiple jobs taking care of 4 boys.
I was convinced to join the Marine Corps to pay for college, I deployed to Iraq from 04-05 during Operation Iraqi Freedom II. I got out of the Marines in 2011 and returned to Waterbury. With the help of family and friends, we incorporated Brass City Gamers as a nonprofit in 2017.
From 2016 to 2018 I attended NVCC and obtained my associates degree in cyber security. Currently, I work in IT service delivery as a senior technical analyst and VoIP subject matter expert.
I believe that our organization is an innovative organization that enables innovation to our consumers through our services. Our tournaments provide our local gamers and community members the opportunity to further enhance their skills and compete in a local level. This increases comradery and morale in our community. Our classes provide students the creative outlet to create their own websites, code their own mini games, develop their own social media strategy, and create a streaming platform s an additional source of income. We also are in the process of developing robotics, esports, and blockchain curriculums.
The city of Waterbury promotes, advocates, and prepares students for manufacturing. However, teachers are receiving minimal training and resources to prepare our students for the 21st century jobs. Our services serve as a support system for the community that provide students an educational resource which allows them to practice and improve their technical proficiency. We offer a unique opportunity to server our residents by collaborating with our local library to provide necessary technical resources. We offer an engaging and fun experience through our classes which improve students overall academic performance. Additionally, through our tournaments we engage both parents and children simultaneously in a fun and competitive environment.
Our goal has always been to integrate our curriculums and classes into the public school system. We are excited that later this year, through a partnership with local nonprofit Bridge to Success, we are working with one of the elementary schools to provide an afterschool coding program for the students. This is the first step of many that will allow us to introduce more STEM related programs and classes to public school students focused around esports, computer science, cyber security, coding, digital media, crypto currency, and blockchain technology.
