How is it a new year?!? Even as we consider our annual purge of things we don't need/want we also are spending a little time reflecting on the things that we do need in the coming year. Like more community building. And more social justice. And more celebrating the wins. In 2023 we donated over $14K to nonprofits and mutual aid funds doing essential work in the community. That's 20% more than we raised from We Care Wednesday in 2022! Thank you to everyone that shopped with intention on Wednesdays, who shared the We Care Wednesday initiative with other organizations, and who hit the like button/posted on social to spread the word.
Without further ado, the January 2024 We Care Wednesday recipient is Resilient Coders. We chose Resilient Coders because our pal, Trish Fontanilla, suggested the organization which is based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Trish often posts about various social justice, economic justice, antiracism organizations on various platforms and is one of the few people we know that uses LinkedIn like a boss. Anyway, we have discovered that our values and Trish's are very much aligned so we felt really good about choosing Resilient Coders.
Resilient Coders's mission is to train people of color for high growth careers as software engineers, and connecting them with jobs. They believe in social justice through economic empowerment, and in the opportunity for meritocracy in tech. Resilient Coders is "radically free" for bootcamp participants who commit to a 20 week program with a training stipend. In 2021, RC served 94 students in 3 cities (Pittsburgh, Philidelphia, and Boston) and 83% of graduates were placed into jobs after graduation, almost tripling their previous average incomes.
As always, we encourage you to donate to RC directly. Through community support, Resilient Coders has been instrumental in bridging the widening divide in tech education, providing critical upskilling and reskilling opportunities to those traditionally underrepresented in the tech industry.
If you are in a position to hire an RC grad you can learn more here. Partnerships with RC often start with just one employee pushing their organization to think differently about their recruitment processes. Could that one employee be you?
Considering volunteering in 2024? Check out RC's mentorship program.
*Since launching the We Care Wednesday initiative in January 2017 we have donated over $85,215 to a variety of nonprofits and mutual aid funds doing essential work in our community as well as other places. From the Mayor's Disaster Fund to BAGLY to Abortion Access Front and Material Aid and Advocacy. We select organizations that we feel represent not only our commitment to a better, more equitable world but also our desire to "do all the good you can, by all the means you can, in all the ways you can, at all the times you can, to all the people you can, as long as ever you can."