Why I want to help 10,000 refugees get jobs?
This post is part 2/5 of a series from the founders of Migrant Hire, where each of us explain why we personally want to help 10 000 refugees get jobs.
The refugee topic is close to me for two reasons. First of all I am personally related to this as my father had to flee from Afghanistan in 2012. Second the country where I come from, ‘’Afghanistan’’, is somehow synonymous to refugees after 3 decades of war, causing a refugee crisis. This has made our neighbor Pakistan the host for over 4 million refugees, and has caused the situation that an Afghan in Pakistan is not called an Afghan, he is called a refugee. This is sadly the fact even for second generation refugees. Germany, where I reside today, is the country with the second highest number of Afghan refugees.
My siblings, my mother, and I came to Berlin in August 2014 to reunite with my father. From my father I learnt that as a refugee you face many challenges. Not knowing the language leads to many problems like making a living, getting a job and cultural integration. Practical information is coming from many different sources, but they all contain different information. This motivated me to do whatever I could do to solve these challenges faced by the refugees. The first step of the process was co-founding a platform to bring together refugees and locals who share common passions and interests.
I meet refugees almost on a daily basis and what I always hear from them is “we want to do something, we want to work, but because of the legal issues, it is really difficult to get a job”. On the other hand, access to the black market is so easy which most of the time leads to exploitation by having no fixed working hours and no minimum wage rate, and in some cases they never even get paid. Due to the fact that it is “black labor”, they can’t make any legal claims against it.
Today there are several job platforms for refugees, but they just show the vacancies. Due to many barriers on both sides, it often means that a refugee won’t end up getting the job. So the problem is not solved, which is why we are building a solution that will not only show them a job vacancy, but break down the barriers needed for them to get hired.
I was lucky to get a job offer after only 3 months in Germany. This opened so many doors for me and has allowed me to co-found two awesome organizations. I want to enable refugees to enter these same doors, and this is why I want to help 10 000 refugees get jobs.
If you are a refugee, please go to our website, it only takes 2 minutes to register. Please feel free to share.
