🇵🇸 Helping Palestinians land tech jobs

🇵🇸 Palestinian tech’s resilience

Raghad, a talented Junior Developer from Gaza, passed her coding test with flying colours during a brief ceasefire in November.

However, due to dire living conditions, she was forced to evacuate, halting her hiring process.

Unfortunately, Raghad’s story is not unique.

It highlights both the harsh realities of life in Gaza and the extraordinary resilience of its burgeoning tech workforce.

Despite years of occupation, Gaza boasts one of the highest literacy rates in the world at 98%. Digital skills education is highly popular, with around 7% of university students pursuing tech studies.

The tech sector, contributing about $493 million to the economy in 2021, holds significant potential for economic growth due to fewer physical and border constraints.

However, lack of opportunities remains a critical issue.

Youth unemployment in Gaza is among the highest in the world, with 70% of young graduates unemployed even before the recent Israeli invasion.

Of the 2,500 tech graduates each year, 50% struggle to find jobs due to a skills gap, and 40% leave the tech field altogether.

To address these challenges, companies like Manara and TAP have been upskilling and connecting young Palestinians, from Gaza and The West Bank, with remote tech jobs in the U.S., Europe, and the Middle East.

And despite the ongoing threat of airstrikes and extreme shortages of essentials, they are continuing to create these opportunities.

⛺️ From a tent to the world

Before delving into the work that companies are undertaking, I wanted to take a moment to spotlight an amazing NGO offering free co-working space for freelancers in Gaza.

Starting with a simple tent, HopeHub has evolved into the first co-working space in Rafah, and extended to Deir Al-Balah and Egypt.

Thanks to public contributions, thousands of Palestinians in Rafah and Deir Al-Balah have been able to reconnect to their online jobs while also helping Palestinians in Egypt network and establish connections to secure employment opportunities.

HopeHub offers freelancers essential amenities such as laptops, internet connection, electricity, bathrooms, and refreshments. Additionally, they provide coaching and mentoring.

If you can donate, please consider doing so below:

 👩‍🔧 Manara

Laila Abudahi was born and raised in a refugee camp in Rafah, the southernmost town in Gaza.

Growing up on food stamps from UNRWA (the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East), she attended UNRWA schools and visited UNRWA clinics.

Her grandmother, the family's first entrepreneur, bought a house in the refugee camp, raised three cows, and sold milk, becoming the first to run a business there.

Despite her challenging circumstances, Abudahi excelled academically.

She graduated at the top of her class with a degree in Computer Engineering but struggled to find a job due to the lack of economic opportunities in Gaza and the blockade, which made it difficult to connect to the global tech market.

Determined to follow her dream of becoming a full-time software engineer at a top tech company, she applied to over 100 jobs over the course of a year.

Eventually, she secured a position in Silicon Valley, where she worked, earned a Master's degree, became a Fulbright Fellow, and joined Nvidia as a senior software engineer, building autonomous vehicles.

After moving to the US, she reconnected with Iliana Montauk, whom she first met at Gaza Sky Geeks, the first and only tech hub and startup accelerator in Gaza which she co-founded and directed.

This led to the creation of Manara, a social impact edtech startup that connects talented computer scientists in MENA, with a special focus on women and Palestinians, to world-class global tech opportunities.

In Palestine, 52% of computer science graduates are women, but 83% of those graduates are unemployed in a region with the highest youth unemployment in the world.

Manara runs cohort-based training programs for computer science students and software engineers, connecting them to full-time remote and onsite jobs with top global tech companies such as Meta, Google, Amazon, Replit, Zalando, and many others.

By bringing together a community of global tech professionals and alumni, the platform provides career guidance, training, interview preparation, referrals, and job placement support.

#TechJobsForPalestine

Seeing the impact of the devastating ongoing war, Manara has launched the #TechJobsForPalestine initiative, aiming for 200 companies to commit to hiring software engineers from Gaza or the West Bank by June 30th 2024.

So far, they're over half way there.

Microsoft and Talabat are among those already committed.

Pledges, a U.S.-based non-profit, has generously stepped in to fund the first few monthly salaries for new hires, helping companies mitigate the initial investment risk.

Thus far, Manara has received 80 applications for the Pledges grant, with about half eligible.

Companies must have at least 40 employees and a technical executive sponsor to ensure long-term support for hires.

Both Manara and Pledges emphasise genuine, long-term commitments to the region, particularly by hiring new graduates and junior engineers, to maximise social impact.

The extraordinary resilience of Palestine’s tech talent and Manara’s impactful positive influence are perfectly encapsulated by Walaa Mohtaseb, a Manara alumnus from the Winter 2022 cohort.

Three weeks after escaping Gaza, she started her first day at a new remote job as a software engineer at HMx Labs from a co-working space in Egypt.

Last month Walaa posted to LinkedIn:

Walaa has set up a GoFundMe campaign to raise funds for her family's evacuation from Gaza via the Rafah crossing, which currently costs $5,000 per person. You can find details on how to help below:

🍉 Only the beginning

During the course of writing, I realised there was too much to cover in just one edition.

So stay tuned for part two this Friday, where we'll dive deeper into the work of TAP and other impactful organisations.

Thank you again for reading, and remember, every small contribution to the initiatives and causes highlighted can make a monumental difference.

See you on Friday!

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