🥟 Announcing The Empanada Fund

TL;DR I’m announcing the creation of a new fund to sponsor community software conferences in Latin-America and provide scholarships for 🇺🇸/🇨🇦 based Latinx folks. So far we’ve raised almost $40k for our 2020 fund, 💵 tax-deductible donations received here (with employer match support).💵

Those of us who have the privilege of living in cities like NYC, SF & others forget about how accessible our ecosystem is. Excellent speakers, venues, and sponsors are generally available for healthy communities, where individuals grow by getting access to the latest technical knowledge. Local communities, in turn, make talent accessible to companies, which hopefully contribute back to these communities with venues and sponsorships. If you live outside of these hubs, the story is much different.

I organized my first ever community conference in 2011 in Bogotá, Colombia, while living in NYC. I was thankful for the community-taught (never self-taught) career that I was able to get into, thanks to the selfless efforts of many who posted blogs, tutorials, and videos sharing all they learned so we could all learn together. Since then, I’ve primarily focused on helping start community conferences, meetups, and tech ecosystems in Latin-America and the US. We’ve shared the lessons learned and the impact we’ve seen through the years.

After opening my big mouth on Twitter in June, and working in the background to get some of the logistics worked out, I’m officially announcing the birth of The Empanada Fund to sponsor communities in Latin-America and Latinx individuals in the US and Canada. Thanks to a few excellent friends who have chosen to give money and remain anonymous, and the backing of Zack with his Foundation, we’ll be able to get some folks some support.

WTF is The Empanada Fund Juan????

The Empanada Fund is a fund that will have two sponsoring programs. One focuses on sponsoring software community events in Latin-America; the other one is an opportunity scholarship program for Latinx individuals in the US and Canada. We’ll raise money, and then disburse it as grants and scholarships to actively sponsor the development of technical knowledge and ecosystems of these underestimated populations.

Why?

Throughout the years of organizing meetups and conferences in the Americas, folks would reach out, asking for tips on how to do it themselves in places where no Silicon Valley company would even dare to exist. After meeting with a few of these folks, I found that I could package support and help kickstart many communities.

As time went by, I found myself sponsoring the empanadas and beverages of the first event of anyone who reached out, as long as they adopted a code of conduct, followed some general recommendations on venue and content, and committed to organizing at least one more community event. This strategy worked surprisingly well but was also limited by my funds and time. As I organized more events in Colombia, I learned that funds are the biggest bottleneck to communities, and access to networks or platforms is almost non-existent. Before we built healthy software communities, local companies wouldn’t generally give cash, and neither would international ones since we weren’t attractive markets for talent. The first empanadas I sponsored inspire the name of this fund.

By focusing on fundraising, and adding a light process to the disbursement, we can scale this impact. I continue to be thankful to the US for the opportunities I’ve had after migrating here, so we’ll also have a track that supports Latinx individuals based in the US or Canada, so they can attend community events, get access to opportunities and grow.

How does it work?

We’re still figuring out some details, but the goal is to make it simple and transparent.

On the fundraising end, the NG-Atlanta Foundation, a 501(c)3 organization, will receive the funds and support us with logistics. Zack runs this organization that has been helping communities in Atlanta, and individuals in Latin-America. He also gets the credit for the US/Canada based scholarship program. We sat next to each other as I flew to Colombia to host JSConf Colombia, talk about serendipity.

On the Latin-American conference front, we’ll be setting up a grant request form, and we’ll make blind selections periodically, similar to the JSConf Colombia CFP. We’ll have some minimum requirements for events, something along the lines of an actively enforced Code of Conduct, focus on the expanded representation of speakers and attendees (the localized kind, not the one defined by US Census), and work towards accessibility.

In regards to disbursement, we’ll be focusing on sponsoring speakers, or venues directly to lighten the load on organizers. We’ll allocate 70% of 2020s fund for this program, with the first selection planned for the end of March. We’ll also open source our budget, just like our pals from BrooklynJS do.

The Opportunity Scholarship program will work similarly to the conference program. IN this case, US or Canada based community conferences will apply for an Opportunity Scholarship grant. They will manage the selection of individuals, and we will provide the funding. Depending on fund availability, we may start with ticket sponsorship for Latinx individuals who are local to the event, and expand with travel and lodging funding as we can.

In the first iteration, I will be solely responsible for the allocation of grants of this fund as I learn how we can make it work. If you’re curious about my previous community work and why you should trust me with your money, slide into my DMs, and I’ll share my work.

How can I contribute?

Very simple, Zack has kindly set up a Donor Box for the exclusive use of The Empanada Fund. Please donate and help us get the word out. Follow @TheEmpanadaFund on Twitter and sign up to our newsletter here so we can keep you updated with our progress in a spam-free manner.

Donate to The Empanada Fund

How can I apply for funding for 2020?

We’ll be selecting our first grantees in March of 2020, please watch this repository and sign up to our newsletter for details on grant applications for both programs.

What’s the deal with empanadas Juan???

They’re delicious, they’re Latin-American culture, and in a time where people want to build walls to keep us out, empanadas unite us.