Software Engineering And Social Responsibility Came Together During a Crisis.

Jobsity is proud to be a community of learners, leaders, and influencers, as well as a nearshore business. Today, our community wants to acknowledge as well as celebrate the work of one of our developers, Pablo Velasquez. Though he is a programmer, today it’s not his coding skills or software career that we want to recognize; it’s his social work in his hometown of Medellin, Colombia.

Early in March, the issue of food security during the COVID-19 emergency became a major issue in his hometown of Medellin, where thousands of people were already living in precarious circumstances even before the pandemic began. On March 30, 2020, Pablo and a number of his friends, and colleagues, began a campaign to help feed those living in targeted communities in response to the stay-at-home orders by the government.

This team, composed of members of the Global Shapers Community, began to visit the vulnerable community of Comuna 8 with two goals: One, to help families to “stay at home” by providing groceries right to their doors. And two: to help promote government guidelines widely in order to minimize the number of Covid-19 cases. This way, the team contributed to tackle the Covid-19 crisis directly in the lives of the most vulnerable, and indirectly worked to reduce the contagion rate in a zone with limited health and economic resources.

This initiative, dubbed “Mercados Compartidos”, was created to specifically target Comuna 8 and focused on SDG 2. The team started receiving donations and later created a website to extend donation options and improve tracking. With a core team composed by Pablo (handling the technical aspect) and Melisa Perez (handling marketing and logistics), as well as a social leader from Comuna 8 known as Candelo (whose years of experience in social projects has even included working alongside Juanes in the search for a positive social transformation with Fundacion Mi Sangre).

Partnerships soon expanded to include non-profit organizations such as Global Shapers Hub Medellín, Corporación Sueños Compartidos, among others. The promotion was done via social media and word of mouth, spreading the message, and increasing campaign reach. To date, the effort has helped equip over 270 families in need of resource deliveries since April 2020. By identifying those with the greatest need, and the resources most needed by families either unable to work or unable to work fully because of the social upheaval in the wake of the pandemic, the volunteers have gone door-to-door with bags of necessities throughout Comuna 8, ensuring families in the most precarious situations are not left behind. And they’ve just started.

Most programmers have hobbies; when Pablo is not working on JavaScript or further enriching his skills with Angular, there’s a good chance he might be brainstorming ways to help those with less, solve social challenges facing his community, or going door-to-door to those most hit by global challenges in order to ensure he’s making a difference--not just online, but in person as well. For this reason, we are proud to call Pablo a member of our community, as well as a member of the Jobsity family. We see you Pablo, and we are behind you 100%. Keep up the great work!

Interested in hiring talented (remote) LATAM developers like Pablo to add capacity to your team? Drop us a line! Jobsity is the nearshore staff augmentation choice for U.S. companies.