VSE Workathon

We, Alex Dong, Soren Rajani, Jin Wang, and James Yu, are undergraduate students at the Vancouver School of Economics and currently work as Research Assistants to Professor Michael Peters. We wanted to let you know about a fundraiser that we are putting together from July 2 to 4, 2021. Workathon for Solidarity is an event initiated by VSE students Amedeus Dsouza and Felipe Grosso in 2020 to promote awareness for and raise funds for anti-discrimination causes by working on Econ Job Market’s Ph.D. placement dataset for around 10 hours a day, manually collecting and developing EJM’s dataset. You can find more information about last year’s event here: https://economics.ubc.ca/news/2020/vse-students-to-hold-workathon-to-raise-funds-for-anti-racist-queer-causes/#.YLf7ui2z1EI

To continue with the efforts of building an inclusive Economics community, we have decided to run another Workathon this year. Recent events have compelled us to take action against the multifaceted nature of racism, misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, and biphobia which, even in its most subtle forms, contribute to conditions that permit overt discrimination and violence to occur. The assaults towards Asians and people that "look Asian" across Canada and the United States, the missing and murdered Indigenous children, the atrocious homophobic, transphobic, and biphobic violence which indeed compund through the challenges of intersectionality impose detrimental effects on our community. We recognize that although these challenges cannot be overcome within the span of a single news cycle or with a single donation, we hope to contribute to a vital conversation.

The premise of our project is simple: for three days in July (July 2- July 4, 2021), our research team, alongside UBC and high school students who will be volunteering their time for the initiative will be working on Econ Job Market’s Ph.D. Placement dataset. With this year's Workathon, we aim to fundraise for organizations that work to support First Nations peoples, Asian American and Pacific Islander communities, 2SLGBTQ+ communities, and self-identified women and children in need. All donations received will be directed to the following four organizations:

- Indian Residential School Survivors Society,​ https://www.irsss.ca/

- Downtown Eastside Women’s Centre, https://dewc.ca/

- Stop AAPI Hate, https://stopaapihate.org/

- Egale Canada, https://egale.ca

We would sincerely appreciate your support for this initiative. We encourage you to donate the amount that you are comfortable with, but in an effort to add some structure we have proposed two forms of donation. We hope you will consider one of the followings ways to donate:

1. Purchase a free pledge ticket on the Showpass website based on one of the following three tiers:

   • Platinum Tier: Sponsor 5 data entries for $1 ($0.2 per entry) - expected donation ranging from $1600 to $7300.

   • Gold Tier: Sponsor 10 data entries for $1 ($0.1 per entry) - expected donation ranging from $800 to $3700.

   • Silver Tier: Sponsor 20 data entries for $1 ($0.05 per entry) - expected donation ranging from $400 to $1900. 

     Through the Workathon, we will be maintaining a website tracking the cumulative number of data entries collected through the project which you can find at https://sage.microeconomics.ca/. At the end of the Workathon, we will email you the final amount based on the tier you have pledged to support, after which you can make your donation on the Showpass website corresponding to the pledge ticket you selected.

2. Alternatively, you could make an immediate flat donation in the amounts of $999, $749, $499, $249, $99 on the Showpass website. https://www.showpass.com/vse-workathon/.

In addition to the invaluable impact you will directly be making on the lives of First Nations peoples, AAPI communities, 2SLGBTQ+ communities, and self-identified women and children in need, we will add your name to our Donor Appreciation page if you would like.

We hope that the project, bolstered with your support, will contribute an ongoing conversation here at the Vancouver School of Economics and the university community at large focusing on issues of race, ethnicity, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, and intersectionality, in particular, the impacts they have on students, faculty, and staff members, which must be discussed and evaluated by all of us.

Sincerely,  

Alex, Soren, Jin, and James