Anowa Quarcoo leads a passionate group that’s using technology to make Toronto a better — and fairer — place to live
Anowa Quarcoo isn’t the type to sit around and watch television when there’s something — anything — else she could be doing. The 35-year-old, who currently works in strategy and planning at Loblaws, recently earned a dual master’s degree in global affairs and business administration — out of boredom. “For me,” Quarcoo says, “boredom is often a signal that it’s time to learn something or try something different.”
When she’s not busy with her day job, Quarcoo spends her time working with others to find ways to use technology to improve civic engagement in Toronto. Having grown up in Kenya and Uganda, Quarcoo says her computer access was a privilege not enjoyed by everyone. “I was also cognizant,” she says, “that the internet was not created for someone like me, who lived on the African continent, and who had a very different perspective and story.”
Quarcoo’s own experience as well her desire to see more representation in city issues led her to civic hacking. Though “hacking” may conjure up images of ’90s action stars in head-to-toe leather breaking into a computer mainframe, as Quarcoo explains, the civic variety is about “using technology and human-centred design to solve problems.”
Take the city’s budget. “How cool would it be if you could understand how your money goes into public coffers,” she asks. “How does that process work? If we make a tool that can allow you to do that, that’s civic hacking.”
“There’s this saying in the civic technology community that no one is coming, it’s up to us,” she says. So Quarcoo, founded Civic Tech Toronto six years ago with a few likeminded individuals. Since then, she has hosted more than 300 “Hacknights,” otherwise known as meetings.
One of Civic Tech’s first big projects the Budgetpedia, aimed to make the municipal budget accessible and meaningfully searchable, so citizens could participate in informed debate and advocate for change.
Taking inspiration from Chi Hack Nights, where Chicagoans gather weekly to create, share and learn in the service of the public good, Civic Tech Toronto meets every Tuesday night (except holidays). “We are a mix of technologists, public policy [makers], comms, activists — people from all sorts technology spaces, all with different perspectives,” Quarcoo says. “We aren’t a monolithic group.”
Quarcoo recalls one Hacknight participant in her 70s who was passionate about creating an equitable city. “And she was a treasure trove of information,” Quarcoo says. “So even though she didn’t understand how to build the technology, she understood the issues and the players in a way that the developers might not.” One of the conversations centred on city-owned residential buildings. “What she brought was a good understanding of senior issues, including barriers that affected them” says Quarcoo.
A typical Hacknight includes a guest speaker and a time for pitching proposals. Projects have included COVID-infection modelling homeless-shelter-capacity data-sharing and suburban-cycling advocacy.
One standout project for Quarcoo is Women and Color. Civic Tech Toronto helped the organization build their new website so it could work to address the lack of women and people of colour speaking at tech conferences. Women and Color makes it easy for people planning conferences to find subject matter experts and address the lack of gender and racial representation. “Straight, cis, white men are not the only people working in technology,” says Quarcoo.
When asked what’s next, in the spirit of Civic Tech, Quarcoo took the question to the community at a meeting. “In the next few months, we are exploring ways to try our hybrid event offerings, as everyone has a bit of Zoom fatigue,” Quarcoo says. “We are also thinking through how Civic Tech Toronto can include and interact with more communities beyond the physical postal-code borders of Toronto — especially since people from all around the world have been able to join our virtual events.”
As for Quarcoo, she’s still keeping boredom at bay. She recently joined the CivicAction Leadership Foundation’s Emerging Leaders Network executive committee as a co-chair to help keep people engaged. “People are passionate about civic issues,” she says. “They’re passionate about living in a city that works well for others, that is equitable. At people’s core, regardless of what your vocation is, you want to live in a city that works well.”
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