VOLUNTEERING WITH OUT IN TECH

Over the weekend, I had the incredible opportunity to join the Out in Tech Digital Corps. Since its first round of development, the project has created over 200 websites for LGBTQ+ grassroots organizations and activists across the globe, including the nine new pages built last Saturday.

I was part of a team that worked under the guidance of the Forum for the Empowerment of Women, a Black lesbian feminist organization based in South Africa. While South Africa has stronger LGBTQ+ legal protections than some of the other countries Digital Corps collaborates with, violence and police mishandling is still commonplace. Attempting to address this issue with South Africa’s Department of Justice has been complicated by a lack of data. For that reason, we created LGBTI Hate Crime Monitoring, a resource for sharing and reporting these incidents, and, by doing so, building towards actionable reform.

In some ways, it’s hard for me to talk too much about the work that went into developing that website. Certainly, we worked hard to create something that met FEW’s needs and will serve as a valuable tool for further activism. But I’m far from a civil rights in South Africa expert, or the region of Southern Africa as a whole, and I feel especially conscious of the varied and long-lasting effects of colonization within that topic. That gap in familiarity can make it hard to know how to help and trust that you’re truly contributing directly to who needs it most. Everything done Saturday was built upon a tremendous amount of knowledge and advocacy brought in by the people who know their communities best, and I’m proud to have been entrusted to execute that need.

The experience also validated the potential of tech in my eyes. It had been a gut punch when our FEW contact explained to us that the lack of reliable data was a barrier in addressing serious acts of violence within her community, and, within a single day, we were able to create a way to collect that data and serve as a common reference to support that collection which simply did not exist the day prior. As someone in the early stages of my software engineering career, I am regularly reminded of the things I can’t do (yet) — this project was a welcome reminder of what can be done, and I'm excited for more opportunities to make a difference.

So, I thank FEW, Out in Tech, my digital corps team members, and Automattic for making it all possible!