Awesome Foundation MIAMI announced that Natalia Martinez, dean and founder, will help select the winners of Voto Latino’s VL Innovators Challenge, a tech competition regranting $500,000 to 10-15 tech projects that help solve issues in the Latino community. Applications are accepted until October 15, 2014 (the final day of Hispanic Heritage Month), at www.VLInnovators.com.
In partnership with the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and Google, Voto Latino launched the VL Innovators Challenge for Millennials between the ages of 18 and 34. The Challenge is intended to cultivate a pool of Latino tech talent and find innovative solutions to problems in the Latino community.
“Over fifty percent of the world’s population is under the age of 30, yet those perspectives and creative juices have been historically separated from sources of funding and attention. That has been changing over the last decade, and the Voto Latino Innovators Challenge marks a continuation in the effort to help young innovators not only dream up great solutions and execute on their ideas, but – most importantly – achieve transformative scale. I am humbled and excited to be a part of this effort and look forward to many great applications!” said Natalia Martinez. “Personally, I would love to see a lot of ideas from Miami.”
Today, Latinos make up a mere 7 percent of U.S. tech workers and studies suggest the gap to careers in Silicon Valley begins at an early age. Black and Latino students are also four times less likely to take AP Math and Science exams than their White and Asian counterparts, and six times less likely to take the AP Computer Science exam. In 2013, Blacks and Latinos made up only 9 percent of computer science and engineering college graduates.
These gaps in access to the U.S. tech workforce have a significant negative financial impact on communities of color. Annually, tech jobs pay an average of $77,000, more than twice as much what the average Latino makes a year, which is $37,000 a year.
Each proposed project submitted for the tech competition must address a need or challenge in the Latino community and must include a new tech tool to solve that challenge. Applications may incorporate any technology — mobile apps, websites, computer apps and programs, social networking platforms, low-cost handheld devices, etc. — and must address any community issue, great or small.
The winners will be announced at Voto Latino’s 10-year anniversary gala later this year.
Sept. 12, 2014