CONCAT

CONCAT was launched to connect talented developers to employment, to code a more inclusive tech sector. All of our developers are refugees or vulnerable women from countries of conflict (based mainly in Lebanon, Iraq and Syria) and we’ve worked hard to create a safe working environment. Our team are based on their talent rather than their nationality or location and they are experts at what they do. We envision a world where if CONCAT was scaled globally, employers are aware of the talent in the Middle East regions and all talented developers around the world have equal opportunities to employment, irrespective of their location, gender or nationality.

CONCAT aims to provide employment and income to talented developers who have little to no access to income through the tech sector. Refugees and women are two of the most marginalised groups around the world. Through prejudice, lack of access to networks and resources, and also lack of employment flexibilities, refugees and women do not have equal access to opportunities that many others do. There is predicted to be 1.7 million refugees in Lebanon alone. It is illegal for these refugees to work in the tech sector in Lebanon, so, as a developer, you have to rely on freelance work from the rest of the world to survive. For women in the MENA region, many report feeling unsafe travelling to/from an office, facing prejudice in an office environment or not having access to flexible employment. 

CONCAT connects clients from around the world who are looking for a website, to talented developers from countries of conflict. Mostly start-ups or SME's, CONCAT creates awesome websites (either new or additions to existing sites) whilst providing essential income to marginalised developers as well as flexible working hours and a safe working environment (everyone works from home). Our team is also structured to allow junior developers and talent to gain invaluable, first-hand client experience, overseen by a handful of more Senior developers.

We specialise is WordPress and Shopify websites but we can also create websites from scratch. We also provide maintenance services, to keep either the new site or existing sites, healthy.

The process with a new client begins by the client reaching out to the admin team, we then connect (based on their individual requirements) the client directly to a relevant developer in the CONCAT team who has the right skillset for the project. From there, the client then works directly with the developer, overseen by a project manager, to create their unique website. We use a CRM to oversee all client comms, finance and admin.

CONCAT's target population is marginalised women and refugees from countries of conflict. They need income, they want to work but they need access to employment opportunities. By providing a platform for our developers to access global clients, CONCAT enables them to earn in fresh USD, enabling them to afford more freedom in their lives and empowering them through employment. We are working to improve their own lives as well as their families, through providing employment and invaluable income. 

We find our team through connections/partnerships with accredited coding bootcamps across the MENA. As we saw that many talented refugees and women were graduating from these bootcamps and struggling to find employment. For refugees, Syrians for example, who are living in Lebanon, web development in a local company is illegal. The only way for them to make income through development is by working as freelancers for clients outside of Lebanon. For women in Lebanon, although it is of course legal if you are from a host community, both host and non-host women face huge prejudice when applying for roles, particularly in terms of appearance when wearing a hijab. Also given the expectation of women in their households from the specific communities we are targeting, it is not possible for many to work normal working hours whilst still fulfilling the needs for them in the home. CONCAT provides both parties with a freedom to work, we all work flexible working hours, the key to success being regular communication with both the team and/or clients. We also ensure all of our team have safe and reliable access to internet, electricity by providing 3G bundles if/when the team require it, so we are able to ensure they have 24 hour access to our employment opportunities we are providing them with. 

All of the CONCAT team are engaged in developing our solution, despite the level of experience they have. Their opinions and ideas drive the company forward, we pride ourselves on the fact that there is no hierarchy at CONCAT and every persons opinion is carefully considered and heard. As CONCAT develops we are working together to find more solutions to our impact our target populations needs even further. We are looking at whether we could install wifi systems in remote communities, or provide laptops and we plan to re-invest some of CONCAT's revenue into coding bootcamps, to continue training top talent in the region.

For us, it is essential we can continue reaching the most marginalised, remote communities and encouraging them to train through our partnered bootcamps, so we can continue to provide them with employment opportunities.

All of our development team are from low-income, remote and refugee communities and CONCAT provides them with a platform and solution to address the lack of employment opportunities available to such communities. We provide our team with safe, affordable internet if they need it, and through that we also give them access to employment in the digital infrastructure. We also provide junior developers with the necessary experience and client communication skills so they too can access the digital economy to find long-term, sustainable employment.

Over the last 6-12 months since CONCAT launched, we have explored the feasibility of our service and business model and it was very successful. Now we are testing our services and business model through our clientele. To date we have worked on over 15 client projects across Europe, Africa and most recently Australia. We are now in a period of growth where we need to test growing our services, expand our team and clientele, and begin looking for investment or funding. We must continue expanding our impact, advocacy work to give more marginalised developers equal access to employment.

CONCAT is innovative because of its business model, we are taking existing talent and existing clients and linking them together to create an impact led business model. Our impact and beneficiaries lead our business. This is a new approach to business models, no longer is it enough for businesses just to give a part of their revenue to an impactful cause, the business should and can embrace this impact even further. CONCAT is leading the way for this, and spreading awareness of the talent and positives that come from working with tech talent in the Middle East. We expect to continue changing the remote, tech industry market through providing that hiring developers from countries of conflict can only be a positive thing. There are talented, diverse, creative and hard-working individuals that global companies need to be made aware of. Not only do companies and employers need diversity in their talent but these communities need us, their countries need us to begin rebuilding broken economies. Already this movement is growing as tech companies begin considering out-sourcing tech resource to Middle Eastern countries, and CONCAT will continue advocating for this.

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We measure impact by how many men and women living in poverty, we provide employment too. We also measure impact by how many women we have empowered through employment and enhanced their use of technology and ICT skills. From this, we can measure how much income our developers have earned and the impact that has had on their own livelihoods and also their families.

Ultimately, we aim to achieve higher levels of economic productivity through our diverse and talented team and by upskilling already trained developers on client communications and interaction skills, we are begin to track the impact we are having on the SDG 8 - Decent work and economic growth.

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My team consists of refugees and women who have come from Syria, Lebanon and Palestine. They are now living across Lebanon, Syria and Iraq and their lives have been very complicated in terms of marginalisation and prejudice based on their nationality, gender or religion. The 3 female developers in my team each told me separately how they were rejected from multiple jobs previously because they wear hijabs. The refugees in my team have described how over the years they have not had access to any form of employment in their field of passion (tech) because of their nationality and where they are living. Although this is a small number, their experiences are sadly representative of many developers across the Middle East. All of the development team have joined CONCAT having been trained through highly accredited coding bootcamps across the MENA. Some then were forced into working as freelancers as the last resort to earning an income. CONCAT is guided by our teams input and so far all of the team want to be able to work flexibly and from the safety of their own home. If this changes over time, the model of CONCAT will adjust accordingly. My 2 most senior developers have been working with clients all over the world as freelancers for years, however sourcing those clients has been a constant battle for them and now finally CONCAT provides them with clients and they are free to focus on what they love, which is the technical part.

CONCAT creates a safe, non-judgemental working environment where our values are built on integrity, inclusion, creativity and responsibility.

We encourage a culture of quick, honest and open feedback with both our clients and team members. We support the inclusion of refugees and marginalised women and we encourage diversity. We encourage diverse opinions, conversations and ideas and we leverage diverse backgrounds and experience. We do not discriminate based on ethnicity, gender, race, age, religion or politics and we are based on the value of encouraging more women to join the tech sector in terms of equality. We are creative through our diversity and we encourage both clients and developers from all backgrounds and industries to encourage and enhance this creativity. We also take responsibility, from the smaller, day-to-day tasks in terms of clients or team admin to larger scale responsibilities such as all of us are committed to working towards creating a more inclusive and diverse tech section and we take responsibility in encouraging more marginalised groups, particularly women to join the tech sector.

MIT Solve is exactly what we need at CONCAT - we are working across the most complicated region in the world and trying to help solve some of the worlds most pressing problems in terms of unemployment and poverty with a solution which is easily scalable and adaptable. We have seen the demand and need for a impact-led business like CONCAT in the tech sector over the last 6 months. Now we need support and mentorship, particularly in terms of technical advice in how to shape the future of our products and services and how they grow as we scale. As CONCAT's founder, access to MIT's ecosystem in terms of experts would be invaluable, however access to like-minded peers trying to tackle some of the worlds largest and most pressing problems is equally as important, and it would be reviving, inspiring and supportive. We also need access to funding, particularly in terms of grants, (which will then enable us to focus on investment and efficient impact measurement) to grow our team effectively in terms of admin, project co-ordination and communications. This in turn will enable us to take on larger projects, giving more income to marginalised developers who are in desperate need of income. Through the exposure of MIT and Solve, not only could CONCAT grow our audience hugely in terms of clientele and impact, MIT Solve could also help us grow our advocacy work for talent within countries of conflict, to a network of potentially global employers.

Financial - Getting mentorship on our accounting practices is essential and evolving them into a position where we would be able to pitch to investors and understand the investment/equity process further.

Business model - in terms of cementing a clearer goal in terms of future product and service markets and creating concise strategies for each.

Legal and Regulatory matters - to ensure we are aligned with each countries regulations that we expand into, particularly in terms of getting money into countries of conflict. Specifically looking at IP law as we scale is going to be incredibly important, in terms of who owns what on the website, CONCAT versus our clients.

Monitoring & Evaluation - we are looking into how to measure the impact of CONCAT on our developers lives, beyond how much income we are providing them and it would be very interesting to seek advice or hear from peers on their current M & E approaches.

Atlassian and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation are two organisations CONCAT would like to partner with. As well as previous successful Solve organisations such as Humans in the Loop and Code Nation, we would like to partner with them through sharing experiences and knowledge. Individuals such as Ian Mulholland and Carlos Centeno would be fantastic to connect too. Atlassian would be able to help advance our solution in terms of software and product/services development as well as our internal team management and systems. For the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation - they are particularly aligned to our mission at CONCAT, we would like to partner with them on the co-ordination of development or management of their website.

Both Ian Mulholland, through his experience of working in a similar field in India and Carlos Centeno, through his non-for-profit, humanitarian experience, are also two examples of Solve members who could help CONCAT as individuals. 

Refugee inclusion is at the basis of CONCAT's foundations and mission. CONCAT exists to showcase refugees resilience in the Middle East and to give them some sense of their own self-reliance. CONCAT would use The Andan Prize to involve more refugees in our solution and bring on more refugees to the CONCAT team not just as developers. We would recruit refugees to work on the admin side of things, in terms of communications , instead of only hiring refugees to join our development/tech team. We would also use The Andan Prize funds to create more tailored training programmes, to up-skill refugee developers on the necessary skills so that they too could become more self-reliant, i.e how to communicate/connect better with European clients. We could also use these programmes to integrate refugee communities more with the local developer communities by up-skilling them together, highlighting social cohesion.

CONCAT's aim is to create a more inclusive tech sector globally and to increase the economic opportunities for marginalised developers from countries of conflict. Our team would use the HP Prize to expand our offering in terms of services, to hire more talented developers and to further advance the inclusion of diverse and marginalised communities in the tech sector. We would also expand our training programmes to begin advancing Digital Literacy skills amongst our existing communities, to encourage more of them to train as developers, which we could then go onto hire at CONCAT.

Women are at the forefront of CONCAT in everything we do. We hire as many women as possible through CONCAT and we are improving all of our female employees quality of life through providing them with income. However we also improve their quality of life by providing flexible working hours and environments, our team can work from home if they feel safe there, they can work around their household chores. We are also improving their quality of life by creating a safe, inclusive network and community for them to work in, gain experience from and develop themselves in. We offer them a supportive environment, void of discrimination or prejudice, where they are respected for their talent, irrespective of their nationality, location, religion or race. One of CONCAT's missions is to empower through employment and with the grant from the Innovation for Women Prize, we would be able to expand our team, to include more female developers to our team. Growing our team, would also enable us to expand the innovative technologies we offer as services at CONCAT, which would go onto enable us to hire more women, empowering even more women through employment.

CONCAT exists to alleviate poverty by providing an innovative, sustainable approach to employment for talented refugee and female developers from countries of conflict. By providing employment for marginalised communities, CONCAT aims to alleviate the pressures of poverty-stricken communities one client project at a time. We are tackling the Syrian refugee crisis, one of the biggest challenges facing humanity now, the lack of women and diversity in the tech sector, and the lack of employment opportunities for marginalised developers across the globe.

The GSR Prize would enable us to consider and learn more about cryptocurrency trading, as many of the countries we work across banking systems collapse, cryptocurrency is becoming one of the most sought after approaches to paying employees across countries of conflict.