The way he remembers it, he went to class not because he was excited by what he might learn, but because it was expected of him. He was shy, he says, and unwilling to speak up.

He had come to California from Honduras as an undocumented immigrant. Under the DREAM Act, he earned the right to keep studying here in the U.S., and somewhere along the way, he developed vague notions of becoming a civil engineer. But as a student at Oakland High School in Northern California, he wasn't all that motivated. "Where I came from," he says, "a good education doesn't matter very much."

But then, in his junior year, he came face-to-face with a nonprofit organization called Genesys Works.

Genesys recruits high schoolers from groups underrepresented in the tech world, including low-income kids like Almendarez, and then it places them in paid internships with IT departments inside local companies. The hope is that exposure to both computers and corporate culture—with adult mentors providing guidance—will put these students on the path to a technology-related college career.