83 | | |
| 85 | 2 -- Applicants are selected by a team from the sponsoring organizations. |
| 86 | |
| 87 | 3 -- Interviews are conducted with each selected applicant and then applicants are assigned their curriculum based on their skills and needs and assigned a mentor. |
| 88 | |
| 89 | Mentors come from the ranks of May First/People Link which includes some of the country's top technologists in its ranks. |
| 90 | |
| 91 | The work curriculum would usually include: |
| 92 | |
| 93 | a -- building a server, prepping it and maintaining it either for the techie's organization, some organization identified by the techie's organization or May First/People Link. The techie would then maintain the server. |
| 94 | |
| 95 | b -- developing website capabilities, email systems and mail list systems on that server and maintaining them |
| 96 | |
| 97 | c -- developing a tehnical support system for that organization |
| 98 | |
| 99 | These areas of proficiency will make this person a qualified server administrator. |
| 100 | |
| 101 | Mentor Role |
| 102 | |
| 103 | The mentor is the living response to a call being made by many activists, particularly within the Climate Control movement, to "take responsibility and give back". Progressive white techies know they have been privileged over activists of color and, for the most part, want to respond by turning that around. |
| 104 | |
| 105 | The mentor's role is to guide the mentee through the curriculum, provide all technical support and question answering needed, share all skills necessary and provide the opportunity for discussion of the social and political context for this work. |
| 106 | |
| 107 | The course would be mentored by the MF/PL technologist who will meet with the techie at least once a week, answer any phone calls the mentee might make with questions, and conduct email communications on any and all topics related. |
| 108 | |
| 109 | Every two months, mentees will gather in a location (probably two locations in the country) for a two day "seminar" with one of the program leaders about what they are learning, how the course is going, what could be changed, what kinds of political developments are taking place that affect their movements, etc. |
| 110 | |
| 111 | The program will award certificates of proficiency to all who finish it. We believe this process will take 18 months in most cases although it is possible that a trainee could finish the course in a year. |
| 112 | |