CareerVillage Partners with Dell to Announce TechWeek, an Event For Students to Gain Career and College Advice from Working Professionals

Today, CareerVillage, the award-winning non-profit organization with a mission to help low-income students better prepare for their future is announcing a partnership with Dell, one of the largest tech companies in the world. To kick off this partnership, Dell and CareerVillage are announcing “Tech Week”, an online campaign from May 16th to 20th to mobilize young Americans to get personal career advice from working professionals in the technology industry. The campaign includes special outreach efforts to engage low-income youth.

Students are invited to post their career questions during TechWeek online at the free website www.CareerVillage.org. Each question will be answered by CareerVillage’s volunteers, including employees working at Dell and other leading technology companies like LinkedIn, Google, Symantec, and many more.

The 8 million high school students in America’s lowest-income communities face a daunting challenge: how to turn their educational isolation and economic disenfranchisement into excitement for bright futures and build the employability skills that put them on the path to success. On CareerVillage students can post any question about any career. The platform then analyzes those questions and automatically distributes them to matching members of its online working professional volunteers. What sets this apart for today’s youth is how personal the advice is and how easy it is to use.

“Students are flying blind,” said Jared Chung, Executive Director of CareerVillage. “They’ve gotten the message that there is a massive career opportunity in the tech sector, but without having met a real tech professional, students often don’t really know where to get started. We’re here to make access to career advice ubiquitous.”

Already CareerVillage is well on its way to addressing this goal as just this month it reached its ten-thousandth volunteer while hitting its millionth student nationwide. With the help of Dell, they can expand the knowledge base on their platform.

Dell has committed to mobilizing tens of thousands of its employees to provide advice and encouragement to students participating in Tech Week. Dell is also funding CareerVillage with more than $100,000 to aid in its mission.

“We are always looking for creative ways to connect our global teams with meaningful volunteer opportunities that use their skills and expertise,” said Jenn Friday Jones, Employee Engagement Manager, Dell. “The partnership with CareerVillage makes virtual volunteerism easy for a global workforce, and allows us to support the next generation of technology leaders. It’s a great platform.”

This partnership will add to CareerVillage’s repertoire of tech professionals on their platform, including its past partnerships with companies such as LinkedIn and Zynga to provide free career advice to students online. The opportunity to get advice from the people who work at these companies is a game-changer for the students.

Many of America’s leading educators are already using CareerVillage. Hundreds of schools and youth programs like KIPP, Aspire Public Schools, YearUp, YouthBuild, Achievement First, Summit Public Schools, Kauffman Scholars, Match Education and more already use CareerVillage in class.

How to Participate:

For young professionals, post your career question on CareerVillage.org during TechWeek to get your questions answered by tech industry professionals. For parents, text a link to your teen or help them compose and post their career questions. For educators, download the Tech Week lesson plan here and schedule time with your students to participate. For working professionals, sign up as a Professional on CareerVillage.org to give advice to students.

What: Dell and CareerVillage present: TechWeek

Where: Online at www.careervillage.org

Date: May 16th to May 20th

Registration is free

ABOUT CAREERVILLAGE.ORG

CareerVillage.org is the 501c3 nonprofit organization using crowdsourcing to transform how underserved youth prepare for careers. CareerVillage.org was founded by Jared Chung and fellow McKinsey alum Jennifer Pan in the Harvard Business School’s Innovation Lab. What started as a grassroots program with 100 volunteers piloting in a handful of New York City classrooms has since expanded into a large global program based in Silicon Valley. The team has been recognized with innovation and education awards from Lumina Foundation, Points of Light, MassChallenge, FastForward, and more.

ABOUT DELL

Dell Inc. listens to customers and delivers innovative technology and services that give them the power to do more. For more information, visit www.dell.com/2020.

Contact Information

Lucy Donahue

PR/Communications

Donahue

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