Urban Video Game Academy

The Urban Video Game Academy is designed to "better prepare students in disadvantaged areas for postsecondary education and technology careers by teaching them the fundamentals of video game design and development." Most excellent. Gamecloud nabbed an interview with it's co-founder, Roderick Woodruff:

We solicited industry participation form leading game software and development companies, but received only a limited interest, due in part to “budget sponsorship cycles” and/or lack of interest if the audience did not number in the thousands. We our audience was more like in the “less than hundreds” but we learned from those who did attend how much interest and learning about the industry took place. We also learned that this type of awareness and training platform must be continued and broadened to reach a larger audience – at the middle, high school and college levels. So after much discussion internally, and among participants who left with the same passion, we started exploring ways to develop an educational and awareness program that would target these audiences.

-- Urban Video Game Academy Interview