A tech Cinderella story: How Silicon Valley helped a homeless teen go to college | Hacker News Reader

A tech Cinderella story: How Silicon Valley helped a homeless teen go to college

venturebeat.com

43 pointscwilson13 comments

Slightly misleading title. it should be:

"How one girl had a great mentor and worked her ass off to get into college"

Silicon valley didn't do shit, Felicia Curcuru should get a Big Sister credit and Ashana Davenport should get credit for taking advantage of a good opportunity.

If silicon valley really cared, they would open up offices in places like philly or detroit...

Banally evil article. "Davenport started working when she was 14 years old. For years she juggled school and clocked 40 hours a week at Taco Bell, where she earned the minimum wage, $7.25 an hour. 'Working less was never an option,' she said."

Ok, US's institutional child labor. If this were an official enemy country, that'd be the angle. If it had the wrong economic ideology, the media would wring its hands about the disgusting culture where many are called "poor"—mysteriously allocated less food and warmth—in contrast to those with more gourmet food than they could ever swallow.

And that country hates females descended from Africa, for some mindboggling reason.

Maybe the Google section would be about how its innovative search algorithm came from government subsidy in a socialize-risk-privatize-profit scheme [1], and how Google avoids taxes and splurges on luxuries while children must work. [2]

Google's anti-meritocracy depends on expensive credentialist barriers: "'But Google won’t take you unless you have a degree. What degree you get affects your salary.'"

This quote would be a howler: "'Ashana is an example where resilience and persistence will pay off in the long run despite coming from a situation where the odds were against her.'" That's the thing about "odds": sometimes a person wins the lottery. (And Ashana didn't win any lottery. She won student debt and some college time.)

[1] http://www.nsf.gov/discoveries/disc_summ.jsp?cntn_id=100660

[2] http://www.forbes.com/sites/connieguglielmo/2013/08/01/apple...

I'm glad this sparked a discussion :) And I really appreciate people donating to Ashana's indiegogo! To add to a couple points:

- Ashana and I definitely did the majority of heavy-lifting, however I want to highlight that I was amazed by the amount of support I received from friends and the tech community. I've only been in SF 1.5 years and I don't have family out here. Friends + acquaintances stepped up big time to mentor her, tour her around their office and even give her internships while she was here. Ashana went to visit 30+ tech offices over the last few months. It sounds small, but exposing her to Google, Facebook, etc can have a big impact on what kids set as goals for themselves. An article cannot capture everything over the last 6 months, but trust me, a large number of people, including people I didn't know well, surprised me with how amazingly supportive they were.

- Ashana is just one girl and there is a much broader issue that requires scalable changes. But, a) I want to give some credit to Big Brother Big Sisters for setting up this program. It does scale, and hopefully, our story and others like ours encourage more people to get involved as Bigs. b) One lesson this taught me is that people WILL step up to help if it is easy for them. E.g., if you say "help poverty", people don't know where to start. But if you say "my little sister needs some more mentors and I'm really busy at work, can you take her to Google for lunch next week?" Pretty much everyone says "yes" in my experience, because it is easy to do and the impact is more measurable. I truly believe (most) people want to do nice things if it is straight forward. --> I don't have a specific recommendation on how to scale that yet unfortunately, but I did find it to be interesting learning and wanted to share.

I look forward to other thoughts people have - especially ones with suggestions on how to scale equalizing opportunity.

-Felicia

In germany there are child protection services which either help parents to, or do, care for persons unconditionally up until 18; or even up until 25 as long as they are provably in pursuit of an education. Even after that there are services that provide for unemployed people and try to get them into proper jobs.

The only thing that went through my head reading this was: Why does it take a rich benefactor for this? Why does her country and society not help her?

While i am happy for her, it is incredibly sad testimony to how cruel and thoughtless the USA as a country are to their children.

I find it odd that on this site so much discussion goes on about:

* Helping the homeless

* Getting women into tech

* The cost of higher education in the USA

* Giving the poor an equal playing field

And yet, this article doesn't get even a single comment in over 2 hours.

If you set expectations for any large Internet community, you are bound to be disappointed.

I am really speechless, honestly.

I for one will support her indiegogo project which is here: http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/let-s-help-ashana-go-to-co...

Considering the top story here right now it may be ok if we just nod, put two thumbs up and support this with real money.

We would support her and her awesome friend, and teach other consultants (sic!) and/or ordinary people to make a difference.

Helping one person with a rich benefactor and indiegogo campaign is pretty much the epitome of a local newspaper human interest story with literally nothing to say about fixing these broad topics that all of society must deal with, any more than a church community holding a bake sale to pay for someone's stroke rehab is a solution to our country's broken health care system.

Frankly even seeing this story on Venturebeat/HN reeks of a Valley-centric libertarian-friendly "pat ourselves on the back" moment.

Although I agree with you on that the story isn't about changing the fundamental problems that affect American society, Its still a good story. Come on, you can't change everything at once! Its not like the girl got through solely by influence/connections alone...she really worked hard and took initiative.

I'm of the opinion that a lot of people would find the determination to work themselves out of poverty if they realized just how much was possible with a little bit of effort. Sometimes, that inspiration is all that is needed to make a change....

It's a nice story for her, but the medium is the message. In this context the story plays into a tech/valley belief that it's OK to live in a world where a combination of "off the chart smarts, fierce determination, and generous well-connected friends" are the solution to endemic crushing poverty. Swap around a couple details and it's the same type of feel-good story of individualism you see all the time in the conservative media.

Read the article again and read about the problems she faced in her family and society. No teenager should need to rise above those challenges, even if some minuscule fraction of them have the intelligence and will and luck to do so.

We should be focused on building a better society for everyone, not making ourselves feel better about the broken society we have.

One thing this site is also “about” is that things should scale. Which this method of dealing with the above-mentioned problem does not.

Oy. I am a homeless woman running some websites...etc. I have gotten a lot of hate here. I don't even know exactly what to say here to you. But I guess I am not exactly shocked.

1 down, 1.6 million to go. High fives all around!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com