Hacky Place
Published in Collective Hub issue 54, September 2019.
CODERS, hipsters, hustlers and humanitarians. A HACKATHON movement is bringing TECH TRIBES together for a GOOD cause – GLOBAL UNITY! And the clock is ticking …
Australian changemaker Anne- Marie Elias had been grinding her wheels for years trying to bring about social impact through the slow and infuriating machinations of government, when her friend, start-up consultant Nicky Williamson, took her to her first hackathon.
“I was gobsmacked,” says Anne- Marie. “I had no idea that this parallel universe existed, of brilliant people who worked for corporates, but who are also looking for something more. And they go to these hackathons and they build shit over 48 hours.”
This event became a pivotal moment in her work – and how she could really make a difference.
When another friend of Nicky, Annie Parker (then the co-founder of start-up accelerator muru-D, now Microsoft’s Global Head of Startups), tweeted about a ‘Techfugees’ event in Europe, saying they were looking for local collaborators, Anne-Marie jumped on it.
So, what exactly is a Techfugees event?
In September 2015, TechCrunch’s London-based editor-at-large Mike Butcher had started a Facebook group for tech workers wanting to use their skills to help solve the refugee crisis. The idea caught on quickly. Within 12 hours the group had 250 members, and the first hackathons were hosted in the UK and Europe within weeks. Their strapline? ‘Empowering the displaced with technology.’
From those enthusiastic beginnings, Techfugees has grown into a global COLLECTIVE HUB 79 non-profit with over 18,000 members, everywhere from Jordan to Thailand. In November 2015, Anne-Marie became part of the trio – alongside Nicky and Annie – who brought the first Techfugee hackathon to Australia.
Since then they have organised an annual hackathon each November, along with two meet-ups a year to keep the conversation moving and the community growing. Anyone is welcome to join the hackathons, whether they identify as a hacker (coder or tech expert), hipster (designer), hustler (marketer or producer) or, of course, a humanitarian.
Participants gather on a Friday night for induction, split up into teams, and then spend the following 48 hours working their butts off to come up with a good idea and build a prototype. At the end of the event there is a showcase and winners are selected, with first prize being AU$10,000.
The work focuses on five areas that are sticking points for displaced people: access to rights and information, health, education, employment, and social inclusion. How could the power of technology, and the hive mind of keen coders, help empower refugees in these areas?
From the beginning, Anne-Marie knew working with a vulnerable group of people meant that the event would need a different approach to the typical hackathon. “Coming from a not-forprofit and government background, my thing was that we needed a really good not-for-profit partner – one that could find refugees and provide the support they needed,” says Anne-Marie.
So she reached out to her old friend Violet Roumeliotis, CEO of refugee support organisation Settlement Services International (SSI).
Her request? “I know you don’t even know what this is, but I’m asking you to trust and take a leap of faith that these are good people. We’re trying to make a difference. It’s about you helping us to give the tech community an opportunity to contribute to the refugee community in a new way.”
Under Violet’s guidance, Settlement Services International helped Anne- Marie find refugees willing to participate and share their stories at the event. It was held in Sydney’s Liverpool to make it as accessible as possible to recently settled refugees, and staff from the organisation stuck around over the weekend to provide support, both to refugees and to hackers with questions about the humanitarian sector.
There are eight principles Techfugees participants are encouraged to use as a guide when creating. These include ‘sharing is caring’ (#opensource), don’t collect data for data’s sake, and inclusivity (what works at empowering displaced populations could be used to help other vulnerable populations, such as homeless people or unemployed youth). Ideally, tech should contribute to the wider community as a whole.
Participants are also encouraged to have a long-term vision. They are reminded that an app that no longer works or isn’t up-to-date can harm the life of refugees and displaced people, creating distrust towards technology and the ecosystem of refugee tech. It’s important to build tools the community can take ownership of and maintain even if the Techfugees disappear.
Several Techfugees projects have gone on to have a life outside the event. One of these is ArtCrew, an online platform that helps connect young refugees to the community via public art mentorships. Another is similarly lo-fi: One Step Walks, which organises community and corporate walks where refugees can build their network, learn about Australia, practice their English and meet potential employers and mentors.
The biggest Techfugees success story comes from that very first hackathon. Nirary Dacho, a recently settled refugee from Syria, got up to speak about his struggles finding employment that utilised his skills as a masters-qualified web developer. The idea? A platform that would connect refugees with employers through internships. It didn’t win any prizes at the time, but afterwards Nirary and another member of the group, Anna Robson, decided to continue working on developing the idea.
When they started speaking with employers to test their model, they found employers were more interested in meeting and hiring refugees rather than offering them internships. Today, Refugee Talent is a thriving recruitment platform on which refugees can create profiles that showcase their skills, and employers can search for talent.
The service also provides refugees with tools such as sharpening their interview skills and learning about the local employment landscape so they can find the right role. The service has become so popular that Nirary and Anna went on to launch a second site, Migrant Talent, to help migrants facing similar challenges in finding work that fully embraces their skills.
Since then the duo have become part of the Techfugees family, attending every hackathon to offer support, and travelling to Melbourne and Brisbane for interstate events – for which Anne-Marie is grateful. “There’s nothing more powerful than Nirary standing up there and saying he was that person who went to a hackathon and built up a successful business out of it,” she says.
She is quick to stress, though, that building a business or product isn’t the point of the event – it’s about building a community and creating opportunities for people who don’t have a local network.
“In the mainstream world, people go to sporting events and activities and they talk,” she says. “Parents get their kids an internship, or get their friend’s kid an internship, or whatever. Refugees don’t have any of that.”
Sometimes ideas drop and sometimes they don’t, that’s part of the process. It’s really about connection and community building. The twice-yearly meet-ups play a big part in keeping the Techfugees participants together.
The organisers also arrange a dinner a few weeks before each hackathon so that parents of prospective participants can check them out and make sure they – and the industry – are legit.
That’s how 17-year-old Iran-born Afghan Shaqaeq got involved. In 2017, when her team won second place for their mental health app idea, her teammates decided to give her the prize: AU$3500 to spend on coding courses.
Shaqaeq now plans to study web development at university, and she’s working on her own start-up. Stories like this bring tears to Anne- Marie’s eyes.
“I’ve got goosebumps and I’m going to cry because I don’t know what her life might be like if we weren’t there at that point,” she says. “That’s why we say we’re changing the trajectory of refugee settlement, one hack at a time.”
