The New York based rap legend Nas will be giving back in a large way by providing young people of color with scholarships for the General Assembly coding academy.
According to writer TJ Armour for Rollingout.com, “located in New York City, General Assembly is a vocational school for engineering and programming that’s recently started the “Opportunity Fund” to help bring more diversity into the field of technology.”
The General Assembly has multiple coding schools around the country including cities such as New York, Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, Seattle, San Francisco, and Washington, D.C. The company was launched in 2011 and has grown substantially.
The Opportunity Fund will be funded by Nas’ Queensbridge Venture Partners. The venture capitalist group will supply the scholarships in association with Google, Hirepurpose and Microsoft. The two tech giants will provide funds specifically for women and vets respectively.
In an interview with Betabeat, General Assembly CEO Jake Schwartz said that “One of biggest concerns is that what we’ve seen is that the students who do the best are the ones with the most skin in the game.”
What General Assembly will give people of color, women, and vets in the long run is the opportunity to create. Coding gives people a chance to have a set of valuable skills and a career change in very little time. In the changing economic environment, coding can give many people a leg up with web page design and entry-level software engineering and an opportunity to create something of their own.
Nas will be a huge part of giving people new hope and opportunities.
