Tech4ALL Digest, Dec 3
December 3, 2024
AImpower x UC Santa Cruz Designathon: Innovating for Community-Led AI Initiatives
March 5, 2025
Our Progress
- 📣 We are excited to formally invite researchers, practitioners, policymakers, and communities impacted by speech AI to join us for a one-day, hybrid CHI 2025 workshop titled “Speech AI for All: Promoting Accessibility, Fairness, Inclusivity, and Equity.” You can learn more about the workshop on its website and submit an application by February 17 to participate. We would greatly appreciate your help in spreading the word and sharing the workshop with interested participants in your networks! 🙏🙏🙏
- 🥳 We are honored to have been awarded a DIFxTECH grant from the Disability Inclusion Fund hosted by Borealis Philanthropy! This grant will provide critical resources to help us continue fulfilling our commitment to build inclusive communication technologies for, with, and by people with speech diversities. We look forward to collaborating with and learning from the Borealis community. Updates and progress will be shared on our website, in newsletters, and during DIFxTECH webinars throughout 2025. Stay tuned!
- 👋🏼 We are deeply sorry to share that one of our founding board members and dearest friends, Karin Patzke, is stepping down from her role at AImpower.org to focus on family responsibilities. Karin has been an incredible influence on the mission and principles of AImpower.org, as well as a calming voice during challenging times. We are extremely grateful for Karin’s dedicated service and will miss her dearly ❤️❤️❤️!
- 🤗 At the same time, we are thrilled to welcome Kaiton Williams — a long-term friend and advisor of AImpower.org — as our newest board member! Kaiton oversees investments at Impact America Fund and has offered invaluable support to AImpower.org since our inception. We are excited to work even more closely with Kaiton on our product and organizational strategy in 2025.
Through intimate conversations with people experiencing homelessness, Mark Horvath—once homeless himself—reveals the complex reality behind the statistics. From college graduates to defense contractors, these stories challenge assumptions about who becomes homeless and why. As cities criminalize homelessness, these voices remind us: behind every statistic is a human being seeking dignity and a place to call home. Full video >> Criminalizing Homelessness Won’t Make It Go Away | NYT Opinion
One Product
“MapSwipe harnesses the collective strength of volunteers to actively contribute to geospatial data projects. From identifying infrastructure to tracking environmental changes and validating map data, MapSwipers help improve map data across the world.
As a result, their MapSwipe partners are better equipped and informed to engage and support communities globally.” Full info >> MapSwipte
One Tip
With only 8% of government employees under 30, the public sector faces a critical workforce challenge. This article explores how shifting from compliance to outcomes-driven culture and adopting modern workplace practices could attract Gen Z talent—a generation eager to make meaningful impact. The solution lies not in changing Gen Z’s values, but in transforming how government works. Full Video >> Transforming Workplace Culture to Attract Gen Z to the Public Sector
One Event
Date: 2024-12-20
Join Shira Honig to discover how Proudly Serving created a collaborative playbook for people-centered digital government services. Learn how experts made complex topics like privacy, accessibility, and data approachable for non-technical audiences, paving the way for more inclusive public services. Full Info » Demo Day: Building a Collaborative Playbook with Proudly Serving
Jobs
“FreeWill is an award-winning, social-good startup that has partnered with 1,800+ nonprofits who support their mission while raising more than $10B in bequests to charities since they were founded in 2017.” Now they have open positions from softtware engineers to corporate paralegal. Full Info >> FreeWill
