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Qeyno Labs Adds Diversity to Bay Area Tech Scene Via Multicultural Hackathons

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Two percent of Silicon Valley workers are African American and three percent are Hispanic. Silicon Valley crosses technological boundaries every day, but when it comes to cultural diversity there’s room for improvement.

Thirty-four-year-old Kalimah Priforce, Headmaster CEO of Oakland-based Qeyno Labs, has been addressing this issue head on by teaching young African Americans how to code. His tech start up is an education social enterprise with a non-profit fiscal sponsor. The Brooklyn native, based in Oaklandlaunched Qeyno Labs and as a school provider in 2010 and has since served over 300 participants. What began as an education software startup transformed into a hands on effort to close the opportunity gap in education technology with Qeyno's Hackathon Academy model.

A natural trailblazer, Priforce held a successful hunger strike at the age of eight, where he demanded more books for his group home’s library. By 16 he started his first tech company that served low-income neighborhoods and the elderly. Since 2010 the innovator has dedicated himself to inclusive technology and education through Qeyno Labs–an effort that has been quite successful by merging entrepreneurial vision with community collaboration. While the tech education startup is profitable, it also waives the cost of hackathon participation for its youth through a subsidized program, which is funded by its alliance network, sponsors, and local community partners.

Credit: www.priforce.com

Priforce’s organization aims to empower children to transform their worlds through social innovation, education, and technology. The Hackathon Academy welcomes low opportunity youth, both boys and girls, primarily between 12 and 20 years old. The social impact organization has over 500 registered mentors, creating a 3:1 mentor to youth ratio. By the end of 2015, Qeyno Labs will have hosted a total of 10 Hackathon Academies and plans to incubate 200 apps within the year. 

“Oakland is showing the world how technology can be inclusive,” says Priforce.

The Hackathon Academy's 3-day events provide a space for youth participants to pitch their idea to the audience before voting. The best ideas continue onto the development and mentorship phase, where students receive insight from technologists, designers, and problem-solving innovators. The weekend experience concludes by presenting each app to a panel of venture capital and investment professionals, who award 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place. Fourteen live apps formed out of Oakland’s first Black Male Achievement Hackathon in February of 2014.

“If you want to be a great developer or a great coder...you need a senior developer or coder whose going to mentor you,” says Priforce. “I think that’s what missing and I think that’s what we’re trying to build and establish.”

Many of the events’ apps provide solutions for community-based issues, fostering ingenuity among the next wave of local leaders. Past events have birthed a range of other apps such as platforms that help fight human trafficking; provide mental support for teens with depression; generate court date reminders; and create action around stalking situations. HelpCircle, a 2014 first-place app, was designed to send preloaded, GPS-oriented, text messages to friends, family, or police, informing recipients the sender is in danger.

While the company teaches participants how to build and deploy apps to the marketplace, Priforce’s Hackathon Academy is more focused on constructing a nurturing, technological network for teens interested in computer science. The CEO aims to provide mentorship that not only spawns new technology, but can also change the trajectory of a participant’s life.

“The purpose of Hackathon Academy isn't to form new companies, but making the accelerated learning experience itself a catalyst moment for each trailblazer,” says Priforce. “Our goal is to hack their isolation.”

Credit: Johnathon Henninger, Qeyno Labs

The budget for each Hackathon Academy ranges from $75,000 to $150,000Qeyno Labs collaborates with 114 community partners, including the Kapor Center for Social Impact, UNCF, CODE2040, and Black Founders.  These Hackathon Academies are set to travel across the country throughout 2015. This includes their Gathering of Nations Hackathon for Native American youth, held in Albuquerque, and their UbuntuHack Hackathon between police officers and youth of color, which will be held in Brooklyn. Qeyno returns to the Bay Area to hold their first ever San Francisco My Brother's Keeper Hackathon Academy in October.

"It is early access to technology and a chance to experience first hand what it can do,” says Mitch Kapor, co-chair of Kapor Center for Social Impact. “Bringing those kind of experiences to more people, to everybody, not just a few people or to people who can afford it…feels like a moral imperative."