HireChance - Drink Coffee. Help Refugees.

The problem exists that the vast majority of refugees worldwide do not have access to education, career development, and decent job opportunities. Solving it matters because 70M refugees have huge potential that is under-utilised and society cannot afford to ignore what these individuals can offer. HireChance is on a quest to turn a perceived burden into an opportunity.We sell direct trade speciality coffee from refugee producing regions and bring it to market through online & offline B2B and B2C channels. We then provide intuitive education for refugees through investing 25% of sales in online education courses through our education partners that will provide a clear path to their career development. We focus particularly on the areas of language and tech. The career development of participated refugees is radically improved through education attained. Employment opportunities increase exponentially, providing a win-win scenario for refugees, employers, and society at large.

As a result of persecution, conflict, violence, human rights violations, or climate change, refugees left behind communities and homes, but they have huge potential that is under-utilised. HireChance is on a quest to turn a perceived burden into a impactful opportunity for refugees and the world economy. Our origins can be traced back to the summer of 2018, when 500 Yemeni asylum-seekers arrived in South Korea through the southern island of Jeju. Finding a way to empower the Yemeni asylum-seekers that were granted temporary humanitarian visas became an important objective for our CEO, Craig, at the time. The initial idea of HireChance was conceived as a mentoring program that would allow asylum-seekers to learn from local experts in Seoul in the areas of tech and language, preparing them for high-skilled jobs in their host country. However, the constraints of the temporary humanitarian visa quickly became apparent: asylum-seekers’ formal labor market access (LMA) is extremely limited, restricting them to low-wage sectors such as agriculture and factory work. 

We are helping refugees and asylum seekers who have existing skills they wish to enhance or a desire to acquire new skills, with the overall goal of benefitting their future career prospects through capacity building. HireChance’s core mission is to breach the whopping gap in access to education in the refugee population around the world by providing full funded certified courses, nanodegrees, and degrees in the tech and languages. By harnessing the talent and potential of refugees, their integration into their host communities becomes a less challenging endeavor. Skills in language and tech give them a higher chance at thriving in their host communities by having formal labor market access (LMA).

HireChance, a Seoul based social enterprise, is on a quest to turn a perceived burden into an opportunity These are our steps: 

1. Sell Direct Trade Speciality Coffee ☕️ 

Through direct trade, we source sustainable, ethical, and delicious single origin coffee from refugee producing regions and bring it to market through online & offline B2B and B2C channels. We’re already supplying customers such as WeWork and the Seoul Metropolitan Government. 

2. Provide Intuitive Education For Refugees ? 

We invest 25% of sales to transparently provide refugees with online education courses through our education partners that will provide a clear path to their career development. We focus particularly on the areas of language and tech. 

3. Create Win-Win Empowerment ? 

The career development of participated refugees is radically improved through education attained. Employment opportunities increase exponentially, providing a win-win scenario for refugees, employers, and society at large.

In terms of coffee, over 600 people are drinking our coffee daily, and we will be scaling that drastically during 2020. On the refugee side we're about to launch a program in March that will initially serve 100 refugees, and hope to serve 5000 within 1 year. We're hoping to serving 1,000,000 refugees by 2025 by becoming the conscious 'Amazon' for locally produced products such as coffee, tea, chocolate; who empowers career development in refugees.

HireChance's combination of providing coffee in a sustainable, ethical manner - while making sure it tastes great - with online career development education for refugees that is transparently linked to the sale of the aforementioned coffee is an emerging form of capitalism. Millennials are increasingly participating in 'woke capitalism' - which is, among other things, an expectation that businesses take positions on social issues. We truly believe that businesses should seek to provide as much value to society as possible, and we believe that providing a product that matches our high end competitors, while transparently reporting profound impact will strengthen our brand identity among the 18 - 35 demographic, who we believe would rather drink good coffee that does good than just good coffee.

HireChance is going to provide access to career development education to refugees in the area of language and tech related skills through the sale of speciality coffee. The output of this will be refugees, who already having been identified through our community partners as being suitable for our initiative, gaining a certifiable skill ranging from a certificate to a nano-degree. The short term outcomes are helping refugees utilise their time to build skills that will give an increased chance of better career opportunities, while improving morale and self-worth. The medium term outcomes are better access to further opportunities through which the initial opportunities brought - particularly in tech as building experience allows an individual to progress further through their field of choice. The long term outcome will be increased activity and participation in the society they entered as a refugee, a sense of belonging and ownership from their contributions to society through their work, and an optimistic view that their skills can be applicable if and hopefully when they can return home. This theory of change is based upon the work HireChance has been doing with refugees in South Korea since mid 2018 and we were led to our current reality through iteration steered by conversations and learning outcomes derived from refugees and asylum seekers.

In our current iteration of providing online career development education,  our initial pilot program is iminent, which will reach 100 refugees in its preliminary stage with tech education funded by HireChance and provided by our education partner. Within one year, we wish to scale the number of refugees served to 5,000, through increased partnerships with grassroots organisations on the ground with refugees in key regions, online education providers - a process we've already started, and entry to new markets through cooperation with local, speciality coffee roasters. Within five years, we aim to serve 1,000,000 refugees, with not only online career development education but a clear path to employment after completion, with companies that value refugees for the skills they've gained and what value they bring.

We aim to execute our plan of action to reach our goals of providing career development education to 5,000 refugees within the next year. This goal will be the catalyst for future progress as we'll make evidence based iterations through analysing the impact made in cooperation with our partners. This will coincide with us scaling our coffee operations to a number of new markets, which will give us the ability to fuel this growth. Within the next five years, we aim to build towards a largely scaled version of what we are currently working on, that will improve through efficient data analysis and accumulated experience in engaging with the communities we are assisting. As the number of refugees increase, we see HireChance becoming an integral resource for refugee education. In 5 years, we want to normalise the fact that refugees can participate in society beyond low skilled work and can create value in economies across the world that will be win-win scenarios. We believe if we achieve our goals, this will become reality.

What we’re attempting is a massive undertaking and we’re well aware of the barriers to scale. 

Firstly, structural differences between regions might hinder our ability to provide an all encompassing offering of career development education. 

Secondly, continuity between education offered and opportunities in-country may be misaligned. 

Thirdly, access to resources, such as smartphones, charging facilities, sufficient data or wifi requirements, and suitable learning environments may have adverse effects on our solution.

Finally, our success is directly linked to our ability to scale our coffee operations, which may not grow as fast as we need due to micro and macro reasons.

Firstly, we'll work closely with on the ground partners in specific regions to identify and share information on what will improve the odds of success considering the particular reality of the situation there.

Secondly, we'll use qualitative and quantitative data to measure the ongoing impact of what we're offering in terms of education, while maintaining channels of communication with local stakeholders.

Thirdly, we'll develop a growth mindset approach to solving external issues related to access to our offerings, which will include collaborating with partners in complementary areas to find synergies such as telecommunications companies, hardware companies etc. 

Finally, combining high quality coffee with expansion strategies that allow us to balance regional growth with impact created will create a tight sales loop. Utilising current and future partnerships to realise our goals while implementing meticulous execution plans will increase our chances of success at scale.

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In Korea, we sell coffee B2B (Co-Working Spaces, Incubators, Multi-Nationals etc.) and will launch B2C soon (On demand and subscription beans and ground coffee). Our plan is to replicate our service in high coffee consumption countries through working with local coffee partners. Our goal is to launch in US/Canada, Japan, UK within the next year - all in ServiceNow's primary markets. 

The opportunity is huge for our product, as the speciality coffee market is expected to reach a value of $83 Billion USD by 2025. The aforementioned countries are all established coffee markets that have a heightened social awareness - particularly in terms of refugee issues. We believe this will be a driving force of sales, and in turn the impact we'll create. 

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We have 3 full-time founders. We also have our roasting partner who has a staff of 5. Additionally, we have 2 refugee community partner organisations, who have under 10 staff each and work to assist us in identifying suitable candidates in their community, while helping us implement our initiative effectively.

Craig LaTouche is a serial entrepreneur from Ireland who founded Jobfindr, a platform that serves users based in the Seoul region from 150 nations and provides a number of intuitive services to them and companies who wish to hire them. Additionally, Craig has launched Connector, the most purposeful international networking community in Seoul. Craig received his Master’s Degree in International Relations from SNU, with a portion of that degree spend at LSE in London. His background is steeped in creating social capital in the NPO sector with INGOs and in the education industry.

Jenny Lafaurie is a Colombian woman with extensive international professional and educational experience. Her passion for international studies, international security, international development, women's empowerment, foreign affairs, and cross-cultural communications led her to educational experience in Universidad del Rosario in Bogotá, Colombia; Korea University in Seoul; Ritsumeikan University in Kyoto; and American University in Washington D.C., where she graduated with Honors with a BA in International Studies in 2016. Her professional experience has included the United States Department of Defense, US-based non-profits, the Colombian private sector.

Elham is a Yemeni woman who has completed a Bachelor degree, MBA, and another master’s degree in Public Administration in South Korea. Her travel and training courses inside and outside of Yemen have also added much to her personal qualities and professional development. She worked with international NGOs such as the British Council and University of Science and Technology in the fields of education, women empowerment, youth development, and vocational educational improvement.

Currently, we've secured MOUs with Paper Airplanes, and Human's in the Loop in terms of refugee community partners. We'll work together with these partners to engage with refugees who are part of their programs in a complementary manner with the education HireChance is offering. 

Furthermore, we are in advanced conversations with well known organisations such as Udacity, Code.org, Sky School, and Alison. These companies and organisations will work together with us to provide access to education that's best in class and suitable for our target audience. So far, the response to our proposal have been overwhelmingly positive. Additionally, we in advanced talks with the International Rescue Committee, an organisation who have a huge reach in terms of refugees served and we wish to complement their work with our services to refugees.

Finally, we have partnered with Let's Coffee in Daegu, South Korea - a speciality green bean trader and roaster - who assist us in providing the highest quality coffee that is traceable, sustainable, and engaging the local community.

We source sustainable, ethical, and delicious single origin coffee from refugee producing regions and bring it to market through online & offline B2B and B2C channels. Firstly, in B2B, we sell directly to co-working spaces, multinational corporations, small to medium sized companies in the Seoul Metropolitan Area (and beyond in the near future). Secondly, in B2C, we'll be selling directly to coffee drinking consumers in the 18 - 35 demographic, who like good quality produce, with an impactful mission, through both a direct purchase, subscription services, events, & festivals. We offer coffee in whole bean, ground, and drip bag forms, with cold brew coming soon. We then invest 25% of sales to transparently provide refugees with access to online education courses through our partners that will provide a clear path to their career development.

Currently, we're working under the premise that we'll be generate our funding completely through the sale of coffee. Coffee is a product that has suitable margins for what we're trying to achieve and we believe that if we peg scalability of coffee sales to our educational impact we'll be able to create an effective growth loop. We of course are open to other forms of financing, but we believe if we start off focusing on resourcefulness and self-sustainability, we'll give ourselves a much better long term chance of success.

Exposure is key to us generating sales in order for us to fund our impact. So far, we've been lucky to have extensive media coverage at home and abroad and we think that winning the Digital Workforce Challenge would help us increase visibility particularly in our next market, the United States, where we are already putting structures in place for our summer launch. 

Furthermore, we'd welcome the opportunity to engage with ServiceNow on what it takes to supply impactful coffee to a company of its size, breaking down barriers for us in our second market. 

Finally, we believe that this initiative is completely aligned with the work we are doing and we'd be delighted to get connected to potential partners through ServiceNow's network. 

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UNHCR - Utilise their network to get closer to understanding the most effective way to increase the impact we'll achieve.

World Bank - Inform policies that focus on addressing longer term, social and economic challenges that will help both the displaced and their hosts.

TENT - Utilise their network to get closer to understanding the most effective way to increase the impact we'll achieve.

Specialty Coffee Association - Partnership to explore ways the speciality coffee industry can increase its positive impact on the refugee crisis.