Bed-Stuy native initiates model startup weekend to engage black youth

Kalimah Priforce, founder of Qeyno, feels like he was lucky to get encouragement to explore computers while growing up in a Bed-Stuy group home, and that encouragement made him the successful man he is today.

So he’s working to give other kids like him a similar boost. His work in Oakland, as a principal organizer behind a hackathon where black youth are put into teams with established developers, could be a model for tech scenes across the country. Startup Weekend — Black Male Achievement takes place Feb. 7-9 in Oakland, California.

If it works there, then something similar could also work here.

More on Priforce’s background:

“There are techies that want to engage with their larger community; they just haven’t really figured out how to do that. We’re giving them the perfect venue,” said Priforce.

Priforce spent most of his childhood and adolescence along with his brother in a group home in the Bed-Stuy neighborhood of Brooklyn. But while he went on to Oxford and tech entrepreneurship, his younger brother was shot and killed at eighteen.

Priforce decided he wanted to be an educator when he realized, “the only difference between us [my brother and me] was that I was exposed to people who believed in me, and when I gained an interest in computers – they fostered my curiosity.”

[Oakland Local]