|
|
|
|
BACK
Updates from Tech Inclusion Project
June, 2021
“Diversity drives innovation – when we limit who can contribute, we in turn limit what problems we can solve.”
— Telle Whitney
Unfortunately, the tech industry fails to recognize this message. As this homogeneous field progresses slowly, minorities are excluded and frequently underrepresented. Our organization, the Tech Inclusion Project (TIP), plans to combat this issue by providing the minority youth with tech-related resources and guide them on their path to success.
In particular, the Tech Inclusion Project will offer a two-month program where students can learn fundamental coding languages, participate in skill-building workshops, network with professionals, and partake in a Hackathon. In other words, our program focuses on fostering an inclusive environment for future coders. Our goal is to uplift minorities in the tech industry because, as we have experienced, it is quite easy to feel discouraged in a field that does not represent you. The Tech Inclusion Project heavily promotes teen leadership by enabling young students to share their skills with other teens. This will let students utilize and refine their leadership while promoting a kind environment.
Additionally, we will create an app called Techsify that will further allow connection-making between students and professionals in the tech industry. Users of Techsify can showcase their projects, share tips, discuss trending topics in tech, and connect with those with mutual interests. Techsify will be a virtual platform where students can rely on for support from both professionals and peers. We aspire to create a cooperative space where students support each other as they grow and become leaders.
Attending an all-girls school that encourages computer science has allowed us to grow as coders in a motivating environment; but only two blocks away, we have underprivileged schools with predominantly minority student bodies where computer science is not encouraged, nor even offered.
Through the Call for Kindness program, we hope to bring life to our mission of diversifying the tech industry. In the program, we look forward to learning technical skills of building our organization and connecting with other kind leaders. In addition, we plan to strengthen our leadership by using the resources offered through the Call for Kindness.
Kindness is an important tool for change, and our organization will use it to benefit underrepresented students. It is important to utilize our empathy to build a diverse tech community and an innovative future. As barriers break and meaningful connections are made, students create a life-long network of alike students and professionals.
Updates from Tech Inclusion Project
September, 2021
The Tech Inclusion Project (TIP), plans to combat the lack of diversity and inclusion in the tech industry by providing the minority youth with tech-related resources and guide them on their path to success. Our program focuses on fostering an inclusive environment for future coders. Our mission is to uplift minorities in the tech industry because, as we have experienced, it is quite easy to feel discouraged in a field that does not represent you. The Tech Inclusion Project heavily promotes teen leadership by enabling young students to share their skills with other teens. This will let students utilize and refine their leadership while promoting a kind environment.
Over the past few months, we have been working on planning and preparing all of the lessons for the Winter Enrichment Program to ensure that students leave the program with an in-depth understanding of HTML & CSS. We started off by reflecting on our journey on learning to code and found what worked best for us and applied that to our lesson plans. After creating our curriculum, we moved on to our workshops. Throughout the process of planning our workshops, we wanted to make sure that our workshops covered topics that we, as current high schoolers, would have wanted to know before entering high school.
Once the basic components of the program were planned out, we turned our focus onto outreach. Currently, we are in the midst of outreach and are using the Riley’s Way and TYWLS community to outreach to students!
To work towards our mission, we will hold our first Winter Enrichment Program this upcoming December! The Winter Enrichment Program is a virtual 2-month program for current 8th graders to be introduced to coding. This program will cover basic HTML & CSS and will teach them the basics of web design. By the end of the program, students will have a comprehensive idea of what it takes to create a website and will have the opportunity to showcase their projects to professionals. Because we value youth leadership, our coding classes will be led by passionate high school students who are already experienced in coding. Along with the coding lessons, participants will attend high school preparation workshops where they will learn about email etiquette, standardized testing, importance of extracurricular activities, and much more!
In regards to logistics, the program will be held from December 4th, 2021-February 13th, 2022 on Saturdays and Sundays. The program days will run from 10am to 12:30pm. While our program prioritizes students who don’t have access to computer science at their school, those who have taken a computer science class are welcome to join to build their skills.
Tech Inclusion Project
Tamanna Begum & Sasha Hori
New York
The Tech Inclusion Project aims to bridge the demographic gap in the Tech industry by providing resources and opportunities to the underrepresented youth. In addition, we will build an app to enable connection-making among tech students and mentors.
June, 2021
“Diversity drives innovation – when we limit who can contribute, we in turn limit what problems we can solve.”
— Telle Whitney
Unfortunately, the tech industry fails to recognize this message. As this homogeneous field progresses slowly, minorities are excluded and frequently underrepresented. Our organization, the Tech Inclusion Project (TIP), plans to combat this issue by providing the minority youth with tech-related resources and guide them on their path to success.
In particular, the Tech Inclusion Project will offer a two-month program where students can learn fundamental coding languages, participate in skill-building workshops, network with professionals, and partake in a Hackathon. In other words, our program focuses on fostering an inclusive environment for future coders. Our goal is to uplift minorities in the tech industry because, as we have experienced, it is quite easy to feel discouraged in a field that does not represent you. The Tech Inclusion Project heavily promotes teen leadership by enabling young students to share their skills with other teens. This will let students utilize and refine their leadership while promoting a kind environment.
Additionally, we will create an app called Techsify that will further allow connection-making between students and professionals in the tech industry. Users of Techsify can showcase their projects, share tips, discuss trending topics in tech, and connect with those with mutual interests. Techsify will be a virtual platform where students can rely on for support from both professionals and peers. We aspire to create a cooperative space where students support each other as they grow and become leaders.
Attending an all-girls school that encourages computer science has allowed us to grow as coders in a motivating environment; but only two blocks away, we have underprivileged schools with predominantly minority student bodies where computer science is not encouraged, nor even offered.
Through the Call for Kindness program, we hope to bring life to our mission of diversifying the tech industry. In the program, we look forward to learning technical skills of building our organization and connecting with other kind leaders. In addition, we plan to strengthen our leadership by using the resources offered through the Call for Kindness.
Kindness is an important tool for change, and our organization will use it to benefit underrepresented students. It is important to utilize our empathy to build a diverse tech community and an innovative future. As barriers break and meaningful connections are made, students create a life-long network of alike students and professionals.
September, 2021
The Tech Inclusion Project (TIP), plans to combat the lack of diversity and inclusion in the tech industry by providing the minority youth with tech-related resources and guide them on their path to success. Our program focuses on fostering an inclusive environment for future coders. Our mission is to uplift minorities in the tech industry because, as we have experienced, it is quite easy to feel discouraged in a field that does not represent you. The Tech Inclusion Project heavily promotes teen leadership by enabling young students to share their skills with other teens. This will let students utilize and refine their leadership while promoting a kind environment.
Over the past few months, we have been working on planning and preparing all of the lessons for the Winter Enrichment Program to ensure that students leave the program with an in-depth understanding of HTML & CSS. We started off by reflecting on our journey on learning to code and found what worked best for us and applied that to our lesson plans. After creating our curriculum, we moved on to our workshops. Throughout the process of planning our workshops, we wanted to make sure that our workshops covered topics that we, as current high schoolers, would have wanted to know before entering high school.
Once the basic components of the program were planned out, we turned our focus onto outreach. Currently, we are in the midst of outreach and are using the Riley’s Way and TYWLS community to outreach to students!
To work towards our mission, we will hold our first Winter Enrichment Program this upcoming December! The Winter Enrichment Program is a virtual 2-month program for current 8th graders to be introduced to coding. This program will cover basic HTML & CSS and will teach them the basics of web design. By the end of the program, students will have a comprehensive idea of what it takes to create a website and will have the opportunity to showcase their projects to professionals. Because we value youth leadership, our coding classes will be led by passionate high school students who are already experienced in coding. Along with the coding lessons, participants will attend high school preparation workshops where they will learn about email etiquette, standardized testing, importance of extracurricular activities, and much more!
In regards to logistics, the program will be held from December 4th, 2021-February 13th, 2022 on Saturdays and Sundays. The program days will run from 10am to 12:30pm. While our program prioritizes students who don’t have access to computer science at their school, those who have taken a computer science class are welcome to join to build their skills.