As part of the Call for Code for Racial Justice project, the Five Fifths Voter web app was built to educate and empower disenfranchised minority voters to overcome setbacks incurred by voter suppression.
Mario Valenzuela, vice president of equity and inclusion at the YMCA-LA, told ZDNet that the collaboration gives the YMCA-LA the virtual tools to educate and empower communities with essential resources to participate in the voting process.
"We're thankful for this opportunity to provide realistic solutions to this youth-led initiative to get out the vote and encourage community members to use their voice to facilitate positive change. For many voters, one major barrier is language. The federal Voting Rights Act and California election code require linguistically diverse areas to provide language help to voters," Valenzuela explained.
"Between the two codes, county registrars also must make 'reasonable efforts' to recruit bilingual poll workers, translate election materials, and offer translated facsimile ballots. The Asian Americans Advancing Justice -- Asian Law Caucus monitors polls to see if they are following the law. Its reports continue to show some poll workers don't know that translated materials exist or where to find them. Although polling locations offer remote language services by video or phone, such services don't allow people to vote independently, as the state code intends."
- Click here to read full ZDNET article by Jonathan Greig
- Learn more by watching full recording of Five Fifths Voter Workshop or watch it below!
Posted August 27, 2021
IBM partners with Y Teens to help advance Social Justice through Tech
Over the past few months, the YMCA of LA has been in partnership with IBM to better support communities in using tech for good and social justice. In the coming months, we will be adopting one of these solutions developed by our teens and IBM. The solution is currently nominated for the EDU track at SXSW.
The LA Y has a teen representative: Trey Buck (Y&G President of the Pali Delegation) along with Chelsea Clinton and other sponsors for the solution during the selection process. We would love for you all to help support us by upvoting and sharing with family and friends the work our teens will be doing to help create more informed, educated and confident voters.
DESCRIPTION AND HOW TO VOTE
We are excited to share that our Call for Code session nomination is now published online and open to voting for the EDU track at SXSW 2022. They received more than 800 applications this year so we could use everyone's support in voting for and promoting this session.
How Student Developers are Saving the World: https://panelpicker.sxsw.com/vote/118605
The greater online community is invited to vote and share input on our session idea through Thursday, August 26. The community will have the opportunity to "Vote Up" or "Vote Down" on all session ideas (votes will be kept private) and add comments to each page. Anyone can cast a single vote for as many proposals as they would like upon creating a PanelPicker account (Be sure to look for our session where it says "Vote on EDU Session Proposals")
Guidelines: Appropriate to alert colleagues, coders, partners, friends, and family to log in and vote for this Call for Code session. We can share this information on social media and through internal channels. Important to note: there can be no paid promotion to get out the vote.
Check out the Call For Code Site.
Thank You All in advance for sharing and voting!!
