South African educational technology (edtech) startup FoondaMate has secured $2 million seed funding in a round led by LocalGlobe, a UK-based venture capital firm, to drive uptake of its WhatsApp and Facebook-based learning chatbot across the globe. How does it work? Foondamate helps students with their revision by giving them immediate answers to questions and access to revision papers, while also guiding them in responses to questions. It aims to level the playing field in education by empowering the 345 million+ students who currently have limited access to internet-enabled education
Facial recognition company Clearview AI, popular for gathering images from the internet to create a global facial recognition database, has been fined more than £7.5 million by the UK’s privacy watchdog. The fine comes just months after a trio of senators called on federal agencies to stop using facial recognition technology built by Clearview AI. In letters signed by Sens. Edward Markey and Jeffrey Merkley, as well as House Reps Pramila Jayapal and Ayanna Presley, the technology was said to pose “unique threats” to Black communities, other communities of color,
Cayaba Care, a maternity health startup, has announced the closing of a $12 million Series A round that will work to expand the company’s footprint within underserved populations. The funding will be used to increase staff, launch in additional markets, and further invest in technology solutions that will increase access to much-needed holistic maternity services. Seae Ventures and Kapor Capital led the Series A round and new investors include Wellington Partners, Citi Impact Fund and Rhia Ventures. Founded in 2020 with a mission to improve community outcomes by reimagining how maternity and pediatric care is delivered, Cayaba
Honeycomb is hiring on pocitjobs.com Alayshia Knighten is a seasoned DevOps Engineer with a love of infrastructure and a focus on breaking down technical learning barriers for customers. She recently spoke to POCIT about navigating life in the tech sector as a woman of color and her role at Honeycomb, an observability tool that lets developers quickly make sense of the billions of rows of data needed to fully represent the user experience in your complex and unpredictable systems. Since joining Honeycomb as a Senior Implementation Engineer in October 2020,
“Anyone can make music on their PC now,” laments DJ Sumbody of Ayepyep, Ngwana Daddy and Monate Mpolaye fame. “You don’t have to go to the studio. You get a program, you do beats. If they can master it, it’s a track, it’s out there. It’s simple now.” While preceding genres and music movements have taken advantage of the ready availability of software that can be purchased or digitally cracked to mimic a physical studio, amapiano has been the most radical departure from established and entrenched ways of making, marketing,
The Black Lives Matter foundation reportedly paid £1.4million to companies owned by the co-founder’s relatives, including her brother and the father of her child, tax filings have revealed. According to tax documents filed with the IRS, the foundation started by organizers of the Black Lives Matter movement is still worth tens of millions of dollars, after spending more than $37 million on grants, real estate, consultants, and other expenses. In a 63-page Form 990 shared exclusively with The Associated Press, the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation Inc. reports that
Wells Fargo employees conducted “fake interviews” with diverse job candidates, The NY Times reports, with one former executive claiming he was fired after complaining about the practice, which Wells denied. Seven current and former employees, including one former executive, told The Times that they were instructed to interview women and people of color for roles that had already been filled. These efforts, they said, appeared to be a way to show a record of diversity efforts rather than actually hire diverse candidates. The current Wells Fargo employees also told The Times
Failing to credit Black creators will cost platforms and TikTok is one firm that’s not trying to be a part of that mess – again. The Bytedance-owned app is introducing the first iteration of creator-crediting tools that will enable — and encourage — users to link back to the videos of TikTok creators and trend originators. The new TikTok tools, rolling out over the next few weeks, will let creators directly tag and credit others through a new button in the app. Kudzi Chikumbu, TikTok’s U.S. director of the creator
In 2017, Iris Nevins decided to leave her job as a teacher in Florida to attend a bootcamp in the Bay Area – but it was not without its struggles. On a Go-fund Me page – where she asked for support – she said: “I began learning how to code through online tutorials, and 7 months later, I quit my job as an 8th-grade history teacher, left my organization, and moved to the Bay Area to attend a coding BootCamp. “Making such a transition is very costly as I had
In February, Prestige magazine published a list of the top-selling pieces of crypto-art to date, with all entries sharing some common traits – they were all men and all white. And when you look into the news reports of those who’re supposedly ‘killing it’ in the NFT or crypto space most of them look the same. But here at POCIT – we’re all about shining a light on the communities that are sometimes cast to the side and forgotten even when they’re making a considerable impact. Before we begin – for
