With so many powerful and funny and kitschy commercials during the Super Bowl one stood out because the subject of the commercial, Estella Pyfrom stands out.

Microsoft’s #empowering advertisement push that launched during the Super Bowl featured Estella’s Brilliant Bus. The computer giant couldn’t pick a better subject. The retired teacher who used her pension to launch a bus that travels around and teaches tech to kids from disaffected communities is a gem. The idea is unique, its impact measurable and its mobility a way to reach far more than most classroom models.

Estella has been recognized as a CNN Top Ten Hero in 2013 and in 2014, largely at her own expense, “Estella’s Brilliant Bus Tech Innovation Tour went to the 2014 #YesWeCode Hackathon and Technology Village at the Essence Festival in New Orleans.”

Her kids won the Hackathon!

Now she wants to repeat with a whole new six-city tour ending at the 2015 #yeswecode Hackathon. But after paying out so much of her own retirement to give kids an #empowering dream, we need to pitch in. We need to give $5 to her indiegogo campaign right now, today. We need hundreds and hundreds of small donors to show the depth of interest in this remarkable women. Rarely do we cast meaningful votes these days, but today you can cast a vote with a small donation that will give this campaign the lift it needs to attract other larger donors that will put Estella and her brilliant bus in motion across this country with a 21st-century American dream.

Estella’s work is a powerful shoulder inadvertanly shoving back against the industrialized prison complex in this country. By catching kids early and showing them the power and opportunity of technology, she’s giving a game plan other than a future of crime, drugs and incarceration. In a country where more than 40 percent of young men under the age of 23 will enter the criminal justice system in some manner, and where a whopping 84 percent of those sent to prison before the age of 23 will return, this effort to open the pipeline of productivity to kids slows the flow of the school-to-prison pipeline that has crippled our country.

Someday soon we’d love to fill a brilliant bus tour with Children of Incarcerated Adultsm the single highest at-risk category in the U.S. We can launch that partnership today by flooding Estella’s campaign with Criminal U donors. Donate and leave a message saying “next stop: Criminal U kids!” We’ll take it from there!

Please help, right now, today, by clicking here.

Thanks.

Source: http://www.blog.criminalu.co/tag/hackathon/

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