Social Hackers Academy PRESS KIT

5 min readNov 29, 2017

Hi there,

As you can probably guess by its title, this is the media kit of the Social Hackers Academy coding school:) In here you will find almost everything there is to know about us - from press release material, to pictures of our team and students.

Hopefully, it provides you with all the relevant information about our project and gives you plenty of reasons to support us and our CauseVox campaign.

Thanks for checking it out and in case you have questions, comments, ideas, or just want to say hello… Send us an email at info@socialhackersacademy.org and we’ll get back to you as soon as possible!

Cheers,
the SHA team

Today’s refugees, tomorrow’s programmers: be part of the solution to the migrant crisis.

We provide underprivileged groups with an end-to-end education in software engineering and entrepreneurship, empowering them to find employment and independence.

This is Social Hackers Academy.

What problem are we trying to solve?

Today there are 62,000 refugees stuck in Greece. Due to economic crisis the country is one of the least prepared in Europe to deal with this influx of people. Currently housing, food, water and other services are paid for in large part by government organizations and NGOs. But very little money is invested in sustainable solutions to the problem like formal education and skills training.

Our train of thought and actions to help solving the problem.

We live in Greece, and we’re programmers. Programmers have a problem-solving spirit that eventually works ;) So, one day, a mysterious enlightenment over coffee showed us a way that made full sense:

Don’t give them fish, show them how to fish: eating, drinking, the warmth of a house or clothes will not cease to exist as a need for refugees. They are in a foreign country with no means to integrate. Unless someone provides these people with the necessary skills to be able to stand on their feet: don’t give them meals and clothes, teach them something useful to get a decent job, get a decent salary and buy what they need (exactly the goods they need, not random goods on offer) all by themselves.
Mind the skills gap: There is a huge discrepancy between the skills that companies are looking for in employees and those that candidates have. Or in economic-speak there is more demand for high skill labor than there is supply of workers with those skills. Web developers and computer programmers fall in this category (and we happen to fall in the same category too).
Teach them how to code: No doubt there’s amazing talent in refugee circles (musicians, actors, writers, lawyers, …) so why shouldn’t there be talent for web developers? All we needed to do is locate them, teach them the software engineering skills and…

Ensure a job position: Programmers and web developers are among the top sought after jobs by companies worldwide. Recruiters love them, multinationals love them, and a medium-sized Greek company could literally beg for them. We could definitely get jobs for our students if we tried. And we did. And it worked: a dozen of tech companies in Athens are now waiting for our first graduates.

This train of thought started as a wild fantasy, but as we started diving in, we realized there were people out there having actually materialized the same thoughts. There was no reason for us to reinvent the wheel: we came in contact with Hack Your Future, the successful coding school for refugees in Amsterdam, shared our ideas with them and collaborated closely to build our curriculum and get our teachers ready for action.

How we are doing so far

Our first coding course started in September 2017, with the financial support of local businesses that provided us with private funds, enough to cover the initial running costs. Our first students have not graduated yet, still they have a clear view of what Social Hackers Academy stands for and the change it will bring into their lives. In December 2017 we launched the second class with 12 students. Everyone seems to be really excited about the opportunity.

Meet our Heroes

Why we need your support

We are launching a crowdfunding campaign to ensure the viability of our project for the next year. Reaching our crowdfunding goal will enable us to run 5 courses and train 60 refugees, 60% of which are expected to graduate and get jobs in leading tech companies in Greece.

Our aim: 12 months of runway. More specifically:

35.520 Euros + 8% Crowdfunding Platform Charges = 38.361 Euros

On average, every share that we get now is equal to €18 donated in the future. Help us maximize our reach right now but sharing to the people you trust.