An Open Thank-You Letter to Our Sponsors of Pride Hacks

Your contribution made a positive impact in Montreal’s LGBTQ community.

Jason Behrmann, PhD

Published in

QueerTech

3 min readAug 30, 2017

Dearest sponsors,

The organizing committee of Pride Hacks and Queer Tech Montreal would like to express our appreciation to your companies for sponsoring our event. With your support, we were able to host the first hackathon for the Canada Pride festivities aimed at strengthening the tech capacities of local nonprofits and NGOs. Through your generosity, we were able to accomplish many achievements.

Thank you.

Your sponsorships helped make our day-long event free and open to all members of the Montreal tech community. With nearly 100 members in attendance, we pooled our knowledge and skills to help 5 NGOs that provide essential services to marginalized members of our community.

Helem, Project 10, Head And Hands, AIDS Community Care Montreal and the Association des pères gais obtained over 600 hours of free technical support and development. In that time, our members completed numerous projects, including:

Modernize the organisations’ websites, one of which was nearly 19 years old;
Install the latest in cyber security measures to prevent common cyber attacks;
Set up project management software to streamline tasks and office administration;
Establish a new telecommunications system to connect once isolated office locations;
Instate an inventory tracking system at a food bank;
And develop a GPS-tracking app to request emergency assistance and identify the location of on-the-ground employees working at risky locations.

We would like to share with you this interview with the board members of the NGOs who express how we helped their organisations at Pride Hacks.

By supporting this initiative, your contribution enabled us to help these organisations do their best work. With new tech capacities, these NGOs are more efficient in providing help to those in need, help in the form of:

Guidance to asylum seekers fleeing persecution and wrongful imprisonment;
Mentorship and support to people in dire states of desperation and at risk of suicide;
The provision of essential health information and services that counter the transmission of disease and death, especially amongst youth populations;
Poverty alleviation.

We at Pride Hacks and Queer Tech Montreal are honoured that you trusted us to make this event a success. With confidence, we would like to inform you that your sound investment will have a lasting, positive impact that you can be proud of.

Sincerely,

Queer Tech MTL and the Pride Hacks Team:

Jason Behrmann, Naoufel Testaouni, Baptiste Laget, Laura MacDonald, Nima Jalalvandi, Lucas Perus, Ricardo Assemat, Pholysa Mantryvong

An Open Thank-You Letter to Our Sponsors of Pride Hacks

Your contribution made a positive impact in Montreal’s LGBTQ community.

List of corporate sponsors and community partners

Written by Jason Behrmann, PhD