![]() ![]() “Now is the time to reassess, to re-evaluate which direction that we as a nation want to go in,” she said. She wanted to limit the potential barriers to getting involved with the organization, which she found to increase access and helped the organization grow. While the once five-six-hour, in-person skill-building workshops her organization offers were trimmed and made virtual at the onset of the pandemic to accommodate the effect of too many hours in front of a computer screen on people’s cognitive functions, Turner opted to make them free. Like Mobley, Ashley Turner of Philly Tech Sistas, which aims to change the white, male narrative of tech, and help women of color gain skills to excel in the tech industry, reflected on the effects of the pandemic and the racial justice protests on its work. “This summer kind of shattered all of that.” “Prior to this summer, we lived in an environment where it was very easy and convenient for people to say we live in a post-racial society, or that these things aren’t really that big of a deal anymore,” he said. He did note, however, that it has facilitated the space for greater dialogue that previously did not exist. ![]() Sylvester Mobley, founder of Coded by Kids and OnE PhiladelphiaĪlthough Mobley found the largest impact of the COVID-19 pandemic to be the forced shift from in-person programming to virtual programming and the struggle to reach similar levels of engagement, he noted that the year’s widespread protests for racial justice haven’t changed the work that he does. “A lot of city governments under the same financial constraints would have just pulled back and said we can’t do anything, and the fact that the city is willing to…make commitments goes a long way to show that this is something everyone is committed to.” “I think it is a very good start for the city to be under the financial constraints that it’s under…as a result of the pandemic,” Mobley said, admitting that the amount itself is small compared to the magnitude of the problems the organizations seek to fix, but that it is a step in the right direction. Studies have shown that the increase in remote work as a result of the pandemic has exacerbated the racial digital divide, as well as the industry’s gender gap, yet advocates feel motivated by recent funding rounds to help combat such disparities. Prior to the pandemic’s onset, the Philadelphia region’s tech workforce was already majority white, male, and non-Hispanic, a report from the Economy League of Greater Philadelphia found in April. The $500,000 funding round distributed to several Philadelphia based organizations in late November was part of the PHL: Most Diverse Tech Hub Initiative, an effort to help diversify a tech workforce historically ridden with racial and gender inequities. Sylvester Mobley, founder of Coded by Kids and OnE Philadelphia, recently received $215,000 from Philadelphia’s Department of Commerce for the organizations’ collective goal of mentoring startup founders and placing underrepresented young people in high-quality tech internships. ![]()
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