In the recent months especially, the refugee crisis has become a hot topic of conversation.
According to Humanosphere, “The number of people forcibly displaced worldwide surpassed a record 60 million—the most since the end of World War II. Twenty million of those displaced, half of which are children, are refugees fleeing wars, conflict and persecution.”
The overwhelming issue in regards to the global refugee crisis is that those looking to help almost don’t know where to start. There are camps struggling with basic amenities such as food and water, others wrought with disease and a lack of medical supplies, all the way up to the economical reality that these refugee camps are filled with families and individuals who, in most circumstances, have no way out. They aren’t given feasible opportunities to provide for themselves or move out of their current situation, and as a result, the global refugee count continues to rise.
One startup that is looking to tackle the issue from an economical impact perspective is Refugee Code Academy, a remote tech startup based out of Taghazout, Morocco. In addition to their vocal contributions to the Oxford Journal about the refugee crisis and its current state of affairs, they just launched their first major campaign to raise the necessary funds to build a coding academy inside the refugee camps.
“We were initially shocked to observe how grave and ongoing the refugee crisis is in Africa, in view of a distinct lack of media coverage. And just when it didn’t seem possible for it to get any worse, it did: the Burundi genocide broke out, resulting in thousands of Burundians fleeing persecution. There has been an overflow of new residents into already crowded and under-resourced refugee camps,” said Omron Blauo, CEO of Refugee Code Academy, in his recent contributions to the Oxford Journal.
How did Blauo come up with the idea to found RCA (Refugee Code Academy)?
Omron Blauo is the son of a Libyan refugee, and saw first-hand the power his father’s education had on him and his entire family’s future.
“The refugee education gap affects the individual refugee as much as it affects the entire international community,” said Blauo, stated in his open letter published by the Oxford Journal, alongside co-founder Alyssa Palmer.
RCA’s long-term play is to forge partnerships with technology companies, and nurture the talents of refugees in the tech space so that they can join the ever-growing IT workforce.
The example presented in their Oxford Journal piece is that a refugee that makes their way to the United States from Africa with little education would likely be placed in a minimum-wage job earning close to $25,000 per year. But the same refugee that had been provided an education (specifically in the tech space) and therefore qualified to enter the workforce as a junior developer could earn upwards of $60,000 for themselves and their family.
In addition, according to an extended report by Devskiller, “The average number of days it takes to hire a new developer is 42. During this time, companies incur productivity losses of up to $33,000, and recruitment costs of $31,000.”
What is so unique about RCA is it’s vision to tackle the refugee crisis by solving for an economical need: an over-abundance of capable human beings, and a growing need for developers in the exploding tech space. In this way, RCA is much more than just a non-profit. Instead, it operates more like a distant marketplace, providing those in need of jobs with the necessary resources required for higher education.
In order to build and implement the first computer lab with the intentions of teaching refugees how to code, RCA is raising $5,000. Contributors can sponsor individual computers (or entire computer labs) for refugees.