New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: American friends life is falling apart badly. What can I do to help?

Ask HN: American friends life is falling apart badly. What can I do to help?
2 by freemint | 0 comments on Hacker News.
I am a German university student. Through a hobby project of mine i got to talk to a trans women from Tennessee. She seemed genuinely interested in my project and made valueable contributions. However her capability to contribute has plummeted so i asked her what's up. From what i gathered she works as an independent contractor and was barely making ends meet, then her hours were cut by 10 hours per week and she is in the red and her savings were non existent. I was shocked she has been contributing from an linux environment on her mobile phone! She can't afford getting enough to eat (!!!), her only phone has a broken touch screen, barely works, her car is slowly dying and dangerous to drive. She has been building and rebuilding a computer at home from discraded parts and it keeps failing. I am honestly at a loss. She seems smart, really interested, has projects which i find promising and interesting on her GitHub. She has an technical understanding of things and is able to find root causes for strange problems not in her area of expertise. Due to homeschooling and religious upbringing i think she has been denied a formal education. She seems to deeply care about how things work, isn't afraid to learn obscure skills (which is how we met) and cares about building tools which make resources observable and accessable. I have been trying to help her put a resume together. Do you have any resources, know any resources, ... anything i could do to help her? A working laptop, a used phone, an interview for a remote junior position, damn even a big box of hygene products and food would help her. I as a university student am not in a position to support her financially and i am not local enough to meaningfully help. As far as i can tell this fate is through no fault of her own. I can be reached at johann-tobias(at)xn--schg-noa.de .

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