Brussels, January 8, 2020 (EdLab / Silicon Luxembourg). Born in 2015, Techfugees aims to create an ecosystem of technology for refugees, supporting the inclusion of refugees and displaced people in the tech industry. 

 

Techfugees was founded by Mike Butcher, a journalist for TechCrunch (a startup and technology news website), during the peak of the refugee crisis in 2015. He wondered how the entrepreneurs around him could help to find good, quickly applicable ideas to facilitate communication, knowing that contact with their family, with authorities, etc. is one of the basic needs of migrants, along with food or shelter.

 

A first "hackathon" (computer encoding workshop) organised in London in October 2015 mobilised more than 300 people and gave birth to practical computer application prototypes for refugees.

 

Thanks to its worldwide community of volunteers, Techfugees now deploys its activities, programmes and events in more than 18 countries across Europe, the Middle East, Asia and Africa.

 

Techfugees also takes on various projects to help refugees: a fellowship program for women, a translation project to help locals communicate with refugees, or an educational project in Syria that gives online learning access to internally displaced people, among others.

 

To learn more about their activities, visit techfugees.com.