🇵🇸 Empowering Palestinian tech talent

 🇵🇸 Accelerating talent

These founders will help 300 people in Palestine to land remote jobs at global tech companies this year.

Meet Christian and Jafar.

When they first started working together, they didn’t set out to create a talent acceleration platform.

But while interviewing software engineers for their company, spotlighting underrepresented Palestinian talent, they identified a problem:

Many candidates had great potential, but they weren't ready for the competitive international job market.

Determined to bridge this gap, they founded TAP to:

• ➡️ Increase the readiness of Arab youth for job opportunities and connect them with hiring companies

• ➡️ Empower tech talent to have thriving lives in their own homeland

Christian himself was born in Bolivia to displaced parents.

His mother's parents left Palestine in 1948, first becoming refugees in Turkey before relocating to Chile.

After studying engineering in the US, Christian pursued an MBA at INSEAD.

It was there he first started working on a startup idea.

The only problem?

He needed a software engineer.

As fate would have it, he met a fellow MBA student in the hallway who was starting an outsourcing IT company in Palestine.

His name was Jafar.

Christian reached out and asked if Jafar could build a product for them.

They became his first customer.

Three months later, he visited Jafar in Palestine for the first time.

He returned home to the Netherlands after his trip with a newfound sense of purpose and decided to go all in.

Together they started Kiitos Technologies, which evolved from a job provider into TAP, a platform for accelerating talent.

Today, TAP is present in Gaza, the West Bank, and Jordan, and they’re expanding to Lebanon soon.

The company offers four-month programs in software development, business development, and digital marketing. The programmes are all online and include:

• Technical training

• Integrated soft skills curriculum

• 1:1 mentoring sessions

• Career coaching

• Virtual traineeships

Joining TAP is risk-free, with zero up-front costs thanks to a shared success agreement, meaning participants:

• Only pay for the training after landing a job with a salary over $900/month.

• Pay 17% of their salary per month for just 18 months.

This year the company is training 300 people, and have a job landing rate that is over 70% right now, and quickly reaching 80%.

 🇵🇸 Palestine’s Future

Since the war in Gaza began, conditions have become increasingly difficult.

Approximately 70% of Gazan TAP workers have lost their homes; many have been injured, and some have lost family members, including spouses.

While some TAP employers continue to pay their Gazan workers, others have terminated them or retracted offers due to the uncertain timeline.

TAP has made cash donations to current and former employees to cover everyday expenses and has provided its Gazan members with digital SIM cards that can be activated remotely, allowing them to connect to other mobile carriers when local ones are down.

In response to the devastating impact of the ongoing war, TAP recently launched a campaign called "Palestine’s Future" in partnership with Wamda.

The goal is to connect 1,000 young tech talents in Palestine with 1,000 global professionals from companies such as Google, Meta, Microsoft, LinkedIn, and Accenture for career coaching, mentorship, and job opportunities.

The campaign quickly surpassed its goal, with 1,087 professionals committing their support to date, and it remains open for new supporters.

Building on this previous efforts, TAP launched the '500 Jobs for Palestine' campaign three weeks ago in collaboration with MBA networks from INSEAD, London Business School (LBS), and IESE.

Alumni from these MBA programs are partnering with TAP to create job opportunities for high-potential Palestinians in leading startups. This initiative harnesses the power of MBA networks to promote equal opportunities in Palestine, ensuring each job contributes to significant positive change for individuals and the broader community.

By empowering Palestinians, TAP is breaking down the barriers that perpetuate inequality.

As Christian has put it, “People are not smarter because of where they were born.”

Talent knows no borders.

💪 Other initiatives

🍉 MENA Alliances: Offers direct employment and project-based models, hiring teams for specific tasks like training Google's algorithms for Arabic dialects. It serves Palestinians in Gaza, the West Bank, Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan, and elsewhere. Using #jobs4palestine, MENA Alliances re-employs laid-off Palestinian tech talent in areas like software development, UI/UX design, graphic design, and marketing.

🍉 Hire Gaza: Offers a list of over 2000 Gazans (mostly in Egypt) seeking tech or tech-enabled work. Note that people are not vetted; this is a connectivity initiative rather than a matching service. ➡ Hire Gaza

🍉 Connect Palestine: Launched by Global Shapers, it unites volunteers worldwide to provide financial aid and job opportunities for Gazans. It raises funds for Gaza Shapers in need of donations to evacuate and connects Palestinians, both inside and outside Gaza, with on-site and remote job opportunities.

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