Diversity and inclusion issues in Colombia… What are we doing? ✨
Tags: diversity, inclusion, community, colombia
Published: 2020-04-30 00:59:18

When I was in high school, I used to play music. More specifically, the percussion instruments and those are instruments played mostly by men. During the four years that I was in bands and orchestras, I was the only girl in the percussion section. Later, in University, I decided to study Software Engineering, where the proportion of women and men is very similar to the one I used to see in my music lessons. This time I wasn’t the only girl studying that, but the women were fewer than men. Since I began university, I always have been considered myself very feminist and empowered, but there’s a comment that I used to say to my friends “It seems that I like boy things.” (🤦‍♀️) A few years later, I realized that that’s not true — that these things (and all things) are for everyone. But culturally, what can we do to make all things, for everyone?

So, let’s start by talking about diversity and inclusion. Diversity is to gather a lot of distinct people, for example for their nationalities, gender, sexual orientation, religion, the way to dress, to think, to get involved, etc. But, in my opinion, this word should always be balanced with the word ‘inclusion’. As a quote by Verna Myers says, “Diversity is being invited to the party; inclusion is being asked to dance.” So, bearing that in mind, diversity and inclusion is not just the gathering of diverse people, it is that all people are accepted and included. The real challenge is not to have a party, it’s to dance with everyone.


**But… why is diversity important in the tech industry? 🤷‍♀️**

The people who work in tech are constantly building solutions that could impact a lot of people, and all people are very different, so, if we have different people with diverse perspectives building a solution, we can create products with everyone in mind. If I don’t have an idea of your problems and context, it’s hard create a solution adjusted to your needs, we don’t have anything against white American men (that’s ridiculous) it’s just that **to build a world for EVERYONE we need to listen to EVERYONE.**

Nobody who is reading this will be surprised if I write that women are a minority in tech, or the fact that in many spaces people are working on efforts to promote diversity. But, would you believe me if I say that today I’ll tell you the solution to all diversity issues worldwide? Hmm…. Definitely Not… All countries and cultures are facing different challenges and difficulties, for instance, it’s not the same to talk about feminism in Canada or Afghanistan or to talk about homosexuality in France or Saudi Arabia where being gay can be punishable by the death penalty because it’s something considered immoral.

But I won’t write about these countries today. Today, I’ll tell you about Colombia, the country where I was born and where unfortunately the socioeconomic status of your family can almost determine your future, because the social gap is huge. In fact, according to the World Bank it’s the second country with the highest social gap in Latin America and the fourth in the world. If I had been born, for example, in the Guajira, the second poorest region in Colombia (according to the DANE’s 2017 white paper on poverty in Colombia) where the kids have so few opportunities that they are actually dying by malnutrition, the probabilities to be who I am (professionally), are so few. The big boundary that I have been identifying in my country for people to enter the tech industry is the lack of opportunities to access education. Only the people with enough money can pay for professional education. We have public universities and they are excellent, but the capacity is really limited. For example, in 2012 when I did the exam to be accepted at public university, I was competing with 1187 people and only 95 of us were admitted. If you go deeper, the people that have higher chances to do well on entrance exams are those who received a good basic education and these people tend to come from private high schools because public high schools are not so good. We have private universities too, but they are really expensive and families acquire huge debts to pay tuition. As a consequence, in Colombia, only 48% of young people (between 18 and 24 years old) go to university and it’s estimated that only 50% of these people will finish their studies.

Related to education, the Colombian tech communities are doing the following actions:

## ColombiaDev 🇨🇴

We have a mostly self-managed tech online community, gathering on Slack more than 1300 Colombian developers ready to share their knowledge, and for almost any topic, you will find someone that will help you, from technical topics to job offers, languages and mental health. This Slack has a strict code of conduct, whose purpose is to provide a friendly, safe and welcoming environment for all, regardless of gender, sexual orientation, ability, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and religion (or lack thereof).

## Inclusive Meetups

One of the first tech communities in Colombia was BogotaJS, founded in 2011. A year later,MedellinJS was created, followed by the creation of other communities such as Google Developer Group, React, Vue, Pioneras Dev, QuibdoJS, Angular Med, Codies, and Python among others. These are some actions that the inclusive meetups are doing to promote the inclusion:

- All our meetups are free so they are accessible for a lot of people.
- All our meetups have a strict code of conduct, most of them are using the ColombiaDev code of conduct.

We are also working on new challenges, for example, to reach the people that are living in rural areas. A special sample of effort and social change is QuibdoJS, who is reaching the most economically vulnerable region of the country. They giving to this community, where some people might not have their own computer, a new opportunity to find a professional career.

## Exclusive Meetups

We are clear about the fact that we don’t want just diverse people, we want diverse people technically good and prepared to face the challenges in the industry, for this, the exclusive meetups are spaces where minorities can learn but also:

- Enter the tech industry through an environment where you can be safe and secure.
- Find people whom you can feel identified with (‘If they can, for sure me too!’ 💪), role models and inspiration.
In Colombia, our exclusive meetups are mostly for women, we have Codies, Pyladies, GeekGirls and Pioneras Developers.

## Conferences

Some of the conferences that we have In Colombia annually are: JSConf, ScaleConf, RubyConf and NgColombia. One of the main goals of these conferences (and at the same time the biggest challenge) is to keep the tickets at an affordable cost without decreasing the quality of the event. In the U.S. The average ticket price is $600 US. In Colombia the tickets have an average cost of $150 US, that is only 25% of the regular cost, but the cost of running a conference aren’t so different in relation to other countries, speakers travel and accommodation, food, venue, conference experiences, etc… And to obtain sponsorship from local companies is really hard because they aren’t used to supporting community initiatives. The result is that volunteer organizing team need to create really good and strong alliances with key companies so our conferences don’t go broke.

- **Opportunity scholarships:** Our conferences have scholarship programs that are not exclusively for underrepresented groups, as the name says, these also for people with less opportunities to attend the conference. For instance, last year JSConf granted around 15% of the tickets to opportunity scholarships, they reserved tickets for people from Chocó where is the city with highest poverty index in the country (Quibdó, According to the DANE) and from Venezuelan that as we know, is a country that is suffering an economic crisis. The scholarships include transportation and accommodation if needed.
- **Supporting each other’s events:** For example, when RubyConf was created the organizing team received all the support, experience and help from the organizing team of JSConf.
- **Language:** Even though the English is a global language and I could say that is the official language in the tech world, we know that not all people speak English, for this reason, our conferences offer translation devices that are used by ~40% of the assistants.
- **Local talent:** We want to promote the local talent and empower the people to share their knowledge at these international events.

## Training Programs

- **Bootcamps:** These are spaces for non engineers to learn about programming. We have two Bootcamps in the country: World Tech Makers and Make It Real.
- **Coderise:** This program, trains people from low income families, that are between 13 and 18 years old, it’s an eight-week Bootcamp, where the goal is not only to learn about development, but also to meet young people interested in technology. The mentorship team is formed by people mostly from the tech communities in the city — people that are willing to share their knowledge. This helps attendees learn and also learn how to teach, with the objective of creating a snowball effect and that they will be who will teach the next generation. This program was born in 2011 and has been done in 4 cities from Colombia (Medellín, Popayán, Sabaneta and Cartagena) and 3 Latin American countries (Colombia, Peru and Honduras) having an impact on more than 150 young people. 150 teenagers who now have a new road of professional opportunities.

Now, some companies are also executing diversity programs. Personally, I hate the job offers that say “We are looking for women for the X job”, I consider that hiring process should be for merit… it’s not fair to hire someone just because they are a woman, a person of color, homosexual… or part of some minority. And it’s not profitable for a company to hire someone just to have a ‘token’ employee and demonstrate something, I think is better to have an employee that is the best option for the position independently of their gender, sexual identity, nationality, religion, etc… At least the companies that are doing this are conscious that we need to do something related to diversity and inclusion, but I think it’s not the best approach. Instead, I suggest to do two things if you want to promote diversity and inclusion at your company:

- Promote and support educational spaces, in this way you are contributing to train potential new workforce and your company will have more visibility in the dev community… in this way, you will not need to search for devs, they will just come to you.
- Don’t scare away people… Pursue an inclusive culture where each one can feel part of the environment and where all people have something to contribute.

Finally, if you want to do actions related to diversity in your community, don’t be afraid to do it, just keep this actions focused on your context and needs. For me, the Colombian communities are an excellent case of that, and I feel very happy and proud watching how people by their own initiative with help from the community, are working in this unpaid job to make the tech world a more inclusive and safe space for everyone.