Prince Quietly Helped Launch a Coding Program For Inner City Youth (qz.com)

An anonymous reader writes: Though many would say Prince changed the world through his music, the artist also took a hands-on approach to changing the world beyond music. The global superstar was the inspiration behind YesWeCode, an Oakland nonprofit, which works to help young people from minority backgrounds enter the tech world. The idea for the program came from a conversation between Prince and his friend Van Jones, who heads Rebuild the Dream charity, following the 2012 shooting of teenager Travoyn Martin. "Prince said, 'A black kid wearing a hoodie might be seen as a thug. A white kid wearing a hoodie might be seen as a Silicon Valley genius. Let's teach the black kids how to be like Mark Zuckerberg.'" Jones told CNN. The program is aiming to teach 100,000 low-income non-white teenagers how to write code, and was launched at the 20th Anniversary Essence Festival in New Orleans in 2014.

Comments

Re:next needed: "from poor backgrounds"

[Anonymous Coward]

The whole "special access due to skin color/gender" bit is getting a bit old

Agreed - so stop being a racist twat who sees a nefarious "darkie plot" where there isn't one.

when what's really probably needed is "special access to people from impoverished backgrounds." When you've never seen anyone in your family working in a corporate office, it's a little hard to see understand what a career in IT/legal/other-cushy-white-collar-job could be, and there are plenty of "non-minority" kids stuck in that world too.

I hear this this great organization in Oakland, YesWeCode, who aims to do exactly that! Perhaps you should consider donating to them. Their mission is, and I quote from their own website, "#YesWeCode has a mission to connect 100,000 low-opportunity young adults to high-paying careers in technology."

Their mission is right in line with your own desire - to see an organization focus on uplift of people from "low opportunity" backgrounds! You might want to start sending your donations to them - I heard that Prince even helped support them, so you'll get extra cool points if you do.

(tl;dr: Don't let the ACTUAL facts get in the way of your blustering narrative, you dimwitted cunt. Now please, do the gene pool a favor, and choke to death on a bowl of cocks.)