SummerQAmp Aims to Create 1000 Tech Internships for Low-Income Students

Meg Rayford Mar 15, 2012 Tweet

Last week a movement was launched to provide students with inspiring opportunities at leading tech companies. SummerQAmp is a nationwide initiative to train a new workforce in high-tech skills and help create tech jobs for young Americans.

SummerQAmp was developed as a commitment to the White House’s Summer Jobs+ initiative and as a call to action for businesses, nonprofits and government to create pathways to employment for low-income and disconnected youth this summer.

The initiative is being led by former White House CTO Aneesh Chopra, musician Jon Bon Jovi, GroupMe co-founder Steve Martocci, Gilt Groupe’s VP of Quality Engineering Kevin Haggard and Onswipe’s CEO Jason Baptiste.

SummerQAmp is setting out to help keep the U.S. at the forefront of innovation by creating tech jobs right here at home. Its mission is to promote awareness for Quality Assurance (QA) as a career opportunity, and it will accomplish this by inviting leading U.S. software companies to offer QA internships this summer to students who haven’t received formal technical training.

“For many people, QA isn’t necessarily a job you go to school for. It’s something you learn on the job,” said Steve Martocci.

I started working closely with the QA team at Gilt and went on to found GroupMe, where our QA team is a critical part of our success. Now I want to inspire others to explore QA as a career, so I’m inviting entrepreneurs and other technology companies to sign our pledge and commit to offering QA internships this summer.

SummerQAmp hopes to create at least 1,000 QA internships this summer alone. You can read more about the initiative at http://www.summerqamp.org/.