Hit producer Pharrell Williams has teamed up with the Georgia Institute of Technology for a new educational collaboration.
The rapper’s non-profit, YELLOW just launched the “Your Voice is Your Power” program, to encourage middle and high school students to share their voices on equity, while learning how to code, by using music.
Pharrell and the George Institute of Technology partnered with Amazon and they are hoping to attract over 100,000 students to the program/competition.
“Your Voice is Your Power” contains five teaching modules with lesson plans, that teach students how to code. Additionally, the program aims to spark meaningful dialogue amongst the students about racial justice.
To accomplish this, the students will use the Georgia Institute of Technology’s learn-to-code-through-music platform called EarSketch.
Each student will remix Pharrell’s new song “Entrepreneur” to share their own voice about the importance of racial equality and social justice.
“This collaboration between YELLOW, Amazon, and Georgia Tech is a celebration of Black creators and change-makers,” said Pharrell. “YELLOW at its core believes that education is a pathway to success. Teaching kids future-ready skills like coding, especially those kids for whom opportunities like this have not been equally distributed, is how we prepare the next generation of entrepreneurs.”
Pharrell, Georgia Institute of Technology, and Amazon hope to close the gap in the number of African-American students receiving STEM degrees in the U.S.
According to the National Science Board (NSB), Black professionals in science and engineering have to double by 2030, to be representative of the Black population in the United States.
The competition kicked off on January 19th and runs through March 12th. A second-round opens up on March 15th and ends on June 4th.
The remixes will be judged by a variety of industry professionals, and the winners will be chosen based on their music, the organization of their code, and the message of racial justice contained in their remix to “Entrepreneur.”
Interested students can visit Amazonfutureengineer.com.