Friends of Gaza & the Decentralized Web of Community Education
A look into our first community workshop with Gaza Sky Geeks introducing decentralization & Web 3.0
On January 15th, our paths entangled in continuing to ‘spread the love of all things Web 3’ in a ~2 hour remote workshop with the Gaza Sky Geeks community of alumni developers and friends.
It was an incredible privilege to have had the space to come together with Gaza Sky Geeks, and participate meaningfully in one of the most awe-inspiring, yet inaccessible, places in the world.
Gaza Sky Geeks (GSG) as much of nerds-at-heart as us
The Gaza Sky Geeks project is a tech incubator based in one of the most improbable places — a violence-stricken area with 4 hours of electricity per day, where 95% of water is undrinkable, and 2 million people are denied freedom of movement. The Internet is, literally, their only window to the outside world.
They are a tech hub with the mission to empower Palestinians — in Gaza and more recently the West Bank — with the education, resources, and opportunity to earn a living through the internet, helping to build Palestine into a globally competitive locale for technology. GSG offers programs helping youth make income through coding, freelancing, & acceleration, and houses the first combined co-working space, the first full-stack programming boot-camp and coding academy, as well as the only startup accelerator + incubator, in Palestine.
This workshop was prepared specifically for graduates of the Gaza Sky Geeks Code Academy. In general, the community includes entry to mid-level web developers proficient in HTML, CSS, Javascript, Node.js, and React. English is a language both spoken and understood at an intermediate level or higher. The students graduate having built real products for local clients in Gaza, as well as international, remote clients based in places such as London.
We began with an introduction to Web 3.0 via some of its background and origins, followed by an intro to general concepts such as blockchains and smart contracts. Our point was to begin to illustrate the landscape of the major paradigm shifts we’re now experiencing in the digital space — and talk about blockchains as core underlying technology driving such shifts in moving from “Web 2.0” to “Web 3.0”.
Here the goals were to explain the historical context and philosophical underpinnings of Web 3, with key ideas around a pro-privacy, anti-monopoly web, permissionless blockchains, interoperability, decentralized applications, and crypto in general as potent, potential forces for this good.
We also sought to cover a bit about the decentralized tech stack, what it means to be a builder in the web 3 space, and how to get started.
Following after that, Simona from the Bounties Network and Scott from Gitcoin spoke about their respective platforms, to explain how both developers & everyday enthusiasts can, and are welcomed, to get involved.
The workshop was tailored so as to best err on the side of beginners, based on feedback gathered from GSG when participants signed up to attend:
A little workshop taste, sweet like ‘knafa’
Simona Pop was captivating and motivational — sharing the Bounties Network desire and drive as a platform for open, easy access for everyone to the rewarding incentives of all kinds of organizing actions for people’s unique perspectives, personalities, ranges, and diversities.
“We can all look to having a seat at that table, participating in that global community with our interests, skills, and passions.” — Simona Pop
Florian Glatz was articulate and lucid — sharing introductions to the ‘world’s blockchains’ and successfully giving good, strong foundations for beginner’s knowledge.
Scott Moore was thoughtful and welcoming — opening up the dilemmas of maintenance and ways that Gitcoin is really approaching fresh ways to inculcate thriving development in open-source technology.
“We center our focus at Gitcoin around things like these feelings of connection and strong working relationships, as well as a range of sustainable wages, always, whether they be from a sufficient base to a higher niche.” — Scott Moore
Ola Kohut was eloquent and so inspiring — weaving the history of the Internet’s open protocols, volunteers, and community standards into contemporary discourse around decentralization focused on underlying human rights, and therefore the inclusion of digital rights within those frameworks globally.
Based on past personal and general experiences with different tech education initiatives, the decision to explicitly include a designated contact person for the participants came from the feeling that such a resource can help ease coordination, facilitate more follow-up and encourage attendees to reach out in any way after the remote session ends.
The participants were also invited and welcomed to the opportunity to join a smart contract development course taking place after the workshop, organized in Berlin via the Redi School of Digital Integration with special focus for the local refugee community.
This course begins next week and will be live-streamed to Gaza, providing the opportunity to also take part in further in-depth learning in real-time.
(For those who are curiosity-peaked by knafa, here’s an easter egg for you.)
Contributors to the ‘calla’ cause
The initiative was a pro-bono, volunteer effort by a team of community members including Ola Kohut (our Gaza Guru), Simona Pop (Bounties Network), Florian Glatz (Blockchain.Lawyer), Scott Moore (Gitcoin), and myself (Gabrielle Micheletti), as well as Anam Raheem (GSG), Dalia Shurrab (GSG), Vivek Singh (Gitcoin), Alex Howell, Ned Karlovich (Status), and of course the wonderful participants who attended in Gaza, gifting both their precious time and attention.
(Calla curiosity? Read on here.)
Manaqish + mentors, please!
Gaza Sky Geeks actively seeks mentors (either in-person or remotely) and sponsors entry permits into Gaza for specialized visitors through their parent organization, Mercy Corps.
Isolation is consistently one of the most challenging obstacles facing the tech community and collective ecosystem in Gaza. As GSG says, “The fiber internet is great and electricity shortages can be overcome with batteries, but a decade of closed borders has meant that few Gazans have worked in international tech companies or startups. In fact, most Gazans today have never been more than 30 miles away from home.”
This is why mentoring to help bridge those gaps and expose Gazans to diverse, global practice by software developers and entrepreneurs, for example, is so appreciated and important.
Whether through development, design, investing, or any other relevant tech skillset, GSG connects distinguished mentors with a love of technology for betterment, impact, and curiosity about emerging markets — to a community of passionate Gazans, who are beyond eager to create new possibilities in a place so rich in history and future potential as Gaza.
If you might be interested in visiting GSG one day as a mentor, bookmark this application page.
(Manaqish, keesh, or kish? Put it to quadratic vote?)
In bringing such initiatives to life, we can encourage more opening up, more contemplating of alternative futures — and especially ones which can explore deeper relationships among global internet citizenship, decentralized participation, and technology that serves people, purlieus, and planet/s.
Here is a link to the combined decks used in the workshop if it might be a helpful resource.
Our shared hope in collaborating with GSG and for the future of the Gazan tech ecosystem is to lay pieces of the early groundwork in moving from passive consumers back to computing citizens-of-the-world in Web 3.0, focusing on inclusive, practical livelihoods, and transforming the feeling in a vibrant community like Gaza from a sense of isolation, to belonging.
