Happy Friday, All!
Let me be the first to say this to you, ’cause I sent this one early as I had some errands to run before work, so … T.G.I.F. … unless of course you have a somewhat happy corny friend like me who likes celebrating simple things, too … and they told you already! Anyway, some of you may know that I work for a lead generation company’s marketing division, and had been in sales for three or four years before it closed down when I was in quality assurance. I am now with a similar company with some young guys from the same location who have a pretty cool network of other “young guys” that have some great skills in IT, computers and programming, all whom I have known and worked with for the past 5 years. Anyone who knows marketing and call centers knows there are always ups and downs, especially with IT. So yesterday, one of the guys (African American) around my age who works with a much younger guy (Latin roots from Jersey … brilliant!) who actually does coding and writing programs, which the company I work for now contracts to keep things rolling, asked me if I knew of or heard of Van Jones … the rest is here!
This is an overview of CNN Broadcaster, Van Jones, and his program which “Chet” told me about yesterday at work called “Yes, We Code!”, so named after the Obama campaign slogan of a few years ago, “Yes We Can”! I have a sticker on my desk that says, “Yes We Did!” Catch my drift! “Chet” also told me that he (Van Jones) and Barack were friends but had to take separate routes for different reasons to champion the same cause – Black Life Matters.
Coding, whether it be colors for pages of a program or the actual layout of an entire program is Greek to me! A friend I used to work with showed me some examples of her coding work!!!! Jeeshh! It’s a whole “‘nother language”, y’all! I’ve created my own website with Angela’s help uploading photos, and links to my books and I have done this blog page, too, so … I have some skills … and can appreciate what goes into doing “coding”. The following is actual segments taken from an article I read discussing Van Jones’s program spreading into the inner cities to reach otherwise “unreachable” youth. Mrs. Lawson is a prominent woman of color who has made a commitment to support “Yes, We Code!”
QUOTE: Lending her endorsement, Mrs. Lawson said, “In our community, so often we come to the table with the sense of entitlement, but people of color are not on anybody’s list.
“If we are going to make something happen, we have to rally ourselves. We have enough people in our community to get that done. I’m constantly reminded of this African proverb that states, ‘If enough spiders band to together and create a web, they can trap a lion.’
“When I think about what all of our parents and grandparents went through, I can’t say I’m tired. I really have to do my part. When I think about what’s going on with our African American males, I really want to weep. We have to help them. They belong to us. They are our children and this is a way for them to see out of this despair and lack of vision to do something that can impact the world globally.”
Striving to move ‘Yes, We Code’ forward, Jones has enlisted support from the Ford Foundation, Essence magazine, recording artist Prince, actor Chris Tucker, songstress Lauren Hill and Facebook. Also, the initiative was unveiled to hundreds of thousands who attended the Essence Festival in New Orleans earlier this month. END QUOTE
Google Van Jones, as he, too, is making a difference for many lives, and hopefully, many futures!
Have a great weekend! “Be the best that you can be!” No more slave ships!! “Black Life Matters”!
Peace,
John I. Cook, Director
Educational Excellence
http://www.excelwitheducationalexcellence.wordpress.com
http://johncook7613.wix.com/know-thyself
https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=X2FRT7NU77NPJ
© 2015 Microsoft Terms Privacy & cookies Developers English (United States)
Educational Excellence 