COLUMBIA, Md.--(COLLEGIATE PRESSWIRE)--Mar 25, 2002--A Columbia-based minority-owned firm has initiated a free internet-based service for minority Americans that aims to narrow the “opportunity information gap” many minorities experience when seeking jobs, internships, scholarships, and other career and educational opportunities.
DiversiTia (dy-VER-si-TEE-uh), Inc.’s “Opportunity Update Internet-Letters” deliver to subscribers’ e-mail inboxes current information about opportunities in ten fields ranging from foreign affairs careers with the federal government to study abroad and fellowship opportunities offered by universities, foundations and others.
DiversiTia obtains information about such opportunities from its clients: governmental, business, academic and non-governmental institutions. A typical client institution, says President and Chief Operating Officer George H. Mitchell, Jr., is one that worked hard in the past to increase diversity but was disappointed with the results.
Mitchell says that for his part he was not just disappointed but astounded to learn in 1999 that, some thirty-five years after initiating equal employment and affirmative action programs, many institutions were reporting little progress, and sometimes even slippage, in diversity.
“In this country we had seen three approaches used in pursuit of diversity: government-led, market-led, and various combinations of the two. We had also seen them fail. Clearly, a new approach was needed.”
Mitchell saw a solution in innovative private sector firms—energized by private enterprise principles and intimately acquainted with both sides—that would stand between minority opportunity-seekers and the institutions to which they aspire, and make as many matches as possible.
“Greater knowledge of, closer communication with, and more interaction between people and institutions seeking each other are necessary to narrow the opportunity information gap,” says Mitchell. All three can be greatly facilitated by an intermediary who has ‘the big picture’—who knows how many qualified people there are, and where; and how many sincere institutions there are, and how to help them. That’s why, in 2001, we established DiversiTia--to help institutions and individuals find and communicate with each other.”
Mitchell hopes interested minority Americans will subscribe to one or more of DiversiTia’s free internet newsletters, and interested institutional officials will seek more information, at www.diversitia.com.
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