Build, Create, and Serve: Reflecting on 2018–2019
What makes us ‘us’ ? Helping others through technology feels good, but why do we go further than that? How do we engage people in our community to help make a difference for them? What motivates us to always innovate, grow, and lead?
Our mission is to build beautiful technology for non-profits, but is this the only way for us to affect a positive change in our communities?
Today we would love to share all the fascinating things that Blueprint has accomplished throughout this 2018–2019 academic year besides 5 non-profit projects that our teams have been working on!
Community Service
We love helping others. From asylum seeker camps to the streets of San Francisco, political and social differences leave millions of vulnerable people without means of survival.
Seeing the impact our work has on the people we hope to help changes how we view global issues around us, and this is why volunteering is so important for us.
This past year, Blueprint participated in volunteer efforts both in our local community and those beyond.
- In December of 2018, our group went to Brownsville, Texas to volunteer at the US-Mexico border. There, we helped to secure thousands of asylum seekers with basic resources needed to safely reach their destinations.
- During the same time one of our members, Pooja Nagpal, taught self-defense techniques for young girls and women in Indian rural villages to oppose violence and gender discrimination.
- During the spring semester, Blueprint members worked with two local organizations to conduct volunteer efforts around our home, Berkeley, California. In March of 2019, we were happy to be the part of Berkeley Project and help one of our local schools, Rosa Parks Elementary. In April, some of our members volunteered at a local non-profit PALS East Bay. There, we assisted one of their free vaccine clinics aimed at helping financially struggling east-bay pet owners obtain basic dog-care.
Knowledge Enrichment
We love learning. In addition to our college classes, we travel around the country to meet like-minded students to collaborate on new ideas to address difference causes. We also meet with the non-profit organizations we work with to better understand their audience and share the progress of our projects.
Conferences & Fellowships
In January of 2019, some of our members went to New York City to participate in Impact Fellowship, a 2-week program where teams develop initiatives on deep technologies such as AI in order to aid real challenges like mass migration, global warming, poverty & much more.
Inspired by the volunteer trip to Texas, our team created a chatbot to help direct asylum seekers to the right legals forms.
“I think it [the fellowship] really speaks to the growing movement of young adults wanting to use their skills to impact the social sector.” — Alice Zhao
More recently, one of our project teams visited the LibrePlanet 2019 Conference at MIT to meet with the Free Software Foundation and showcase their mobile application.
“I learned a lot about people in the Free Software community who are so passionate and closely engaged in the challenging topics as privacy and protection in major tech companies.” — Tony Yang’19, Project Leader for FSF.
Field Trips
Every semester Blueprint’s External Team visits different companies around the Bay Area to learn from various change-makers, innovators, and industry leaders. At Airbnb we learned about the Open Homes Program which offers free space for refugees fleeing conflict in their home country, newlyweds who lost their home in a wildfire, and cancer patients who need to be closer to the medical care.
At Dropbox we received empowering career advice from Product Manager and Designers on effectively combining product design, UX writing, and engineering in a single team. At Notion, we met with Ivan Zhao and Camille Ricketts to explore the art of a small team culture, the history of computing, and share our experiences of using Notion at Blueprint.
Education & Innovation
We love educating. At Blueprint, we hope that the technical knowledge we gain from working with non-profits is not kept internal to our organization. We want that knowledge to be readily accessible to the whole campus community. To do that, some of our members lead two DeCal classes (student-run courses at UC Berkeley.) During the Fall and Spring semesters, we offer Ruby on Rails and React classes respectively for curious and passionate students who want to learn more about web development.
Bridging the gap between our External team and developers, we created several committees, where each member of us can learn, grow, and develop new skills ranging from content writing to event planning. During the general meetings, our Design Directors educate on UI/UX fundamentals and visual design principles through a series of workshops, ones that are truly valuable for everyone of us.
Important Conversations
We love inspiring others to get involved in the technology for social spaces. Whether it’s exchanging ideas or carrying out open discussions in tech, we believe in driving change through collaboration with industry innovators. Last fall, we hosted lots of events, including info-sessions with Lyft, Houzz, and Jane Street.
We also hosted tech talks on AI for Social Good, where Christine Robson from Google talked about different applications of how AI can help firefighters to tackle wildfires, protect ocean & marine life, and predict patient’s medical events in healthcare. We really hope to put on more exciting and thought-provoking events in the future!
Growth
We love sharing. Did you know that we have a chapter at the University of Waterloo? Our goal is to share our mission with the world and empower those who want to enact a positive change. Check out our friends in Canada here!
Our Medium Blog features a variety of personal stories meant to foster meaningful conversations and hopefully diversify the computer science community. We try to advance these ideas through all our social media channels, newsletters, and media partnerships. Learn more about us here:
- The Atlantic Article
- Social Media: Twitter, Instagram, Facebook
- Join our newsletter here!
Author: Karina N. | Editor: Grant K. | Visuals: Rachel He | Team: External
