A code school for refugees

This was originally published in June 2017 on the Rumi Labs blog

Today there are 50,000 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.

This summer we will be launching a code school in collaboration with The Cube, a coworking space in Athens. We will accept between 10 and 20 students, and teach them front-end development (HTML, CSS, and Javascript) over the course of 6 months. Each week we will tour a new technology company based in Athens. And at the end of the program students will be placed at these companies or begin working remotely for companies in the United States. Our hope is that this will provide a path out of the camps and towards a dignified, financially independent life.

We realize that teaching a couple dozen students to code and helping them find high wage jobs is a drop in the ocean. But we believe that this is the right use of resources for the following reasons:

Market-based thinking

In order for a solution to be financially sustainable we believe it must consider the market — yes, that nasty thing that we have to thank for Big Macs.

Today most humanitarian work exists in a vacuum. Organizations hire people in impoverished communities to manufacture necklaces and shirts and then sell them abroad for “sympathy dollars.” But often times consumers buy these products to support the cause, not because the product is superior to other substitutes. As a result these organizations can’t scale or provide employment to the masses.

When we started our work in Oinofyta Refugee Camp this year, we ran into a similar problem when we tried teaching low-skill labor. The idea of the project was to teach refugees how to do data entry and web research tasks that American companies currently outsource to India. But what we learned was that the market for this work was too competitive. Given food and housing prices in Greece — low as they are by European standards — there was no way for a refugee to compete and make a living wage doing this low-skill computer work. It was a nice idea, but it had no chance of scaling in the way we had hoped.

That led us to a new idea.

Two birds, one stone

Many readers of this will be aware of America and Europe’s “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.

Our goal in launching this code school is to solve two problems at once: by teaching refugees to code we’ll be improving their earning potential and at the same time we’ll be helping to reduce the skills gap. We believe that this is a more sustainable approach than teaching people skills that are quickly becoming obsolete in the West.

Solving problems for companies flush with cash, as many tech companies are, opens up the possibility of financial sustainability. Currently companies in the United States pay as much as 25% of an employees first year’s salary to recruiting agencies. In other words they’re willing to pay for this talent.

Opportunity where it doesn’t already exist

One of the most heartbreaking things I’ve ever heard was a refugee tell me that he wanted nothing more than to continue his studies. For this young man, who was smart enough to teach himself two languages, there are little to no education opportunities in Greece. Exams required to get into Greek Universities cost money and even if he found the funds, there is a good chance he’d be rejected.

If the current trajectory continues there will be a group of 50,000 people in Greece that are in essence second class citizens: under-educated, marginalized, and hopeless. And many refugees are aware of this.

This lack of hope for asylum-seekers in Greece goes a long way in explaining why the suicide rate is so high and why so many young people have cuts on their wrists. But the truth is that the Greek government doesn’t have the money to provide opportunity for refugees. That’s why we think it’s so important that outside organizations step in.

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Will teaching a small group of refugees to code solve all the problems in Greece’s refugee community? No. We’re aware that this is a drop in the Aegean Sea. Our hope, however, is that we can provide a model for financially sustainable humanitarian work that others can follow. Our biggest ambition here is that we can create a network of code schools for marginalized refugees all over Europe and the Middle East. But that big hairy audacious goal starts with a dozen students and a single classroom.