Fearless is supporting youth tech training at these 6 Baltimore nonprofits in 2021

Fearless has announced its six 2021 community partners, continuing a program that’s an example of a local tech company giving back as it grows. The group of Baltimore nonprofits will receive $60,000 in grant funding between them from the downtown Baltimore digital services firm.

In 2021, Fearless gave a preference to organizations serving historically underserved or underrepresented groups, specifically racial minority groups. Not only will the community partners receive financial support, but Fearless employees will have opportunities to volunteer with the community partners.

“Whether it’s giving our team paid time to pour into our city, or developing a donation matching campaign, service to our community is a pillar of what we built Fearless on,” Fearless CEO Delali Dzirasa said in a statement. “Our community partners and grant recipients represent some of the best nonprofit organizations in Baltimore and show up every day to make our city and community a better place.”

The 2021 partners are:

• Mentoring Mentors: Fearless is supporting high school mentors and mentees with the opportunity to obtain an IT certification and participate in yearly college visits, as well as other mentorship, tutoring and programming
• Pass It On: Fearless’ support will go towards expanding the technical training org’s STEAM program “Digital Storytelling.” Students learn pre-coding skills using the SCRATCH programming language, while also learning the fundamentals of creative writing.
• Let’s Go Boys and Girls: The grant will support the implementation of eight after-school competitive STEM teams in Baltimore public schools for grades 6-8 in the 2021-2022 school year.
• Libraries Without Borders: This grant will go toward building a digital learning center for youth in a majority Black neighborhood where more than 35% of residents lack access to the internet.
• Junior Achievement of Central Maryland: The grant will support the Junior Achievement Rising Women program, an 18-week initiative that takes a cohort of 15-30 girls from Baltimore City in grades 9 to 12 through the hands-on experience of launching their own startup.
• Code in the Schools: The grant will support the computer science education nonprofit’s new Grads2Careers, a pilot program with Baltimore-based software engineering workforce company Catalyte and Fearless.

Donte Kirby is a 2020-2022 corps member for Report for America, an initiative of The Groundtruth Project that pairs young journalists with local newsrooms. This position is supported by the Robert W. Deutsch Foundation.