Creating Tech Opportunities: DC’s Pathways Scholarship
Washington, DC’s Pathways Scholarship
The Pathways Scholarship is the first of its kind initiative to create tech opportunities for under and unemployed communities in DC. The goal is to include those who have been excluded by providing a program with resources, training, employment and ongoing support.
The larger DC Community spearheaded, by WDCEP and our Pathways Consortia Partner Amazon Web Services, is coming together to break down barriers and create an opportunity for sustained employment and retention. By following the ideas outlined in the Pathways to Inclusion Report by Mayor Muriel Bowser, WDCEP and our partners aim to create opportunities for inclusive employment across the tech sector.
PATHWAY #1: Tech Inclusion
This first pathway is focused on tech inclusion and includes a series of community partners, led by the Washington DC Economic Partnership. This pathway is broken down into five stages:
- Identification + workforce training: Byte Back, a local DC non-profit, will partner to identify potential applicants and support on-going technology and workforce training.
- Technical training in web development and data science: Thinkful will provide five Pathway Scholarships, including one full scholarship and four partial scholarships, to Thinkful’s flagship six-month course in web development.
- Ongoing mentorship: Each scholar will work with a mentor who’s an expert in the field. Mentorship will take place in In3. Mentors will be curated by The Mentor Method and come from D.C. companies like Amazon Web Services and Google and will help scholars learn best practices, grow scholars’ networks, and prepare for the challenges of their first tech jobs.
- Community Support: Partners such as BEACON will provide roundtable discussions, educational sessions and presentations to provide additional access to community resources. Amazon Web Services will be providing specific training on their platform as part of this engagement.
- Employment: MEANS Database will be an employment partner, providing job opportunities to graduates of this program. At MEANS graduates will help program a website that has rescued over 100,000 pounds of food that would otherwise have been thrown away.
- Pay it forward: In recognition as partners and sponsors we can never pay it back to all the people who have helped us along the way, all organizations and individuals participating in the program sign on to continually support and sustain the pathway.
Learn More
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