Does Anyone Know if Google Code School for Women was a Real Thing? (Poverty Issue)
People on welfare are often castigated for "bad decisions". I often see comments to the effect of: "Why didn't this person go out and get training to better themselves and catch up with the current economy (instead of whining about being displaced from their housing by people with tech salaries and vandalizing the Google bus...).
I have a tech background that was disrupted by my disabilities. But I was an epic beneficiary of the Affordable Care Act, which just kicked in this January, and I've been able to entertain returning to the working world instead of spending my life on SSI, whereas I was pretty much doomed before. However, both my skills and on-the-job experience would instantly round-file my resume, so I've been looking at ways around my various obstacles.
One of my biggest obstacles is that technical training usually requires long commitment times. The Department of Rehabilitation would pay for me to get some basic refresher technical training (at the Community College level, but not, say a Masters degree). But I would have to commit to certain attendance goals, and I can't do that as long as I'm on General Assistance and my housing situation is being held hostage. If I were already on SSI, it would be no problem: my housing would be stable (though I'd probably have to rely on food banks since SSI=my real rent, and you can't get food stamps while on SSI), so I could survive long enough to take the classes and then exit SSI when I re-entered the mainstream workforce. But I'm still on unstable, inadequate General Assistance, so I've been living on the margin of homelessness for two years, and I can't commit to a training course.
But I can still think about bettering myself in a flexible way, which is why I can do online CodeAcademy and edifying YouTube videos. Thus, I was rather excited when I saw this announcement:
http://www.businessinsider.com/google-free-coding-lessons-to-women-2014-6
The first time I read the article, I somehow overlooked the part where they had already given out most of the vouchers through some back door. But even after that sunk in, I thought I'd have an excellent chance at this. I was a woman with a lot of tech background who could hit the ground running. I had experience with CodeAcademy and MOOC-style coursework. I had been incredibly disadvantaged, but I had also shown a lot of initiative in overcoming obstacles. Plus I lived in the Bay Area - I could go to face-to-face events, if offered! Perhaps Google was trying to make a real difference in the lives of women like me! The application was just a tiny text-box: I think I argued my case for at least a dozen paragraphs.
A couple weeks later I got a rejection letter from "Women Techmakers", and I figured that was that. They had given away most of the vouchers through agencies, and I just wasn't good enough (perhaps not young enough, either) for the remaining slots.
Then because of some of the changes in my health status, I got a new Department of Rehab counselor, and I was excited about a fresh start there. The first thing I asked about was these Google Code School vouchers. I explained I was interested in them because of the flexibility. The DOR counselor had never heard of it, but he wrote it down for research. He asked around, and no one had heard of it. Google apparently hadn't been offering any such vouchers to help the disadvantaged around it's own backyard in the Bay Area (at least not through the Dept. of Rehab).
Since this was a "global initiative", maybe these vouchers went to a group of "disadvantaged" female ITT grads in India who will make up Google's next generation of junior employees...?
Am I wrong to have that suspicion? Does anyone know where these supposed vouchers went? What disadvantaged and minority women they helped?
All I can say is things like that could go along way to help the training problem in Oakland, where the nature of General Assistance does make it impossible for people to complete "high level" types of training, i.e. most technical fields. The disadvantaged minority women are there, too.