Poor? Just learn to code
Did anyone catch this tragedy in the New York Times? The hubris of the start-up culture extends to Appalachia. Yes, coding is a skill, but it’s not a solution.
Also, Mined Minds is a SCAM, fully knowing that they were profiting off of people’s struggles with poverty.
Mined Minds came into Appalachia espousing a certain dogma, fostered in the world of start-ups and TED Talks, and carried with missionary zeal into places in dire need of economic salvation. The group was premised on the notion, as one grant proposal read, that “anyone can have a successful career in the technology industry,” and that if enough people did, the whole area would be transformed.
When I lived in the Bay Area, these coding academies were everywhere. I get recruited as a humanities graduate student, with the threat that just having the writing research skills is not enough.
You want to learn to code? Great. If you look hard enough, there are several free resources. Form a work group and teach each other. Never pay someone tens of thousands of dollars to for the promise of a tech job. Nothing is guaranteed.