Migratedthe first startup that Josephine Goube, a 34-year-old Frenchman, founded in Paris together with Marco Muccini, helped migrants apply for a visa in Europe: “A titanic operation for anyone, imagine for those who do not speak the language of the country in which they find themselves and have experienced great traumas in their country,” he says. And he adds: “In those years I discovered a lot about immigration rules and the relative difficulties and I understood that there was no way to arrive legally and everything was done to arrive illegally”.
Techfugees, the tech non-profit for the empowerment of refugees
This is why the young woman approaches Techfugees, a non-profit born in London active in twenty countries that creates open-source and open-data platforms to identify, map and imagine tech solutions for the emancipation of refugees and displaced people all over the world. “My intent wasn’t to save the world but to make life easier for the people of the people here,” she comments.
“Thanks to the Techfugees data, I discovered that the situation was even more difficult for women: they were often relegated to the house to look after the children and, without contact with the outside world, learning the language and finding a job was even more difficult. Often then, they had traumatic events behind them that made them insecure”. Goube’s sensations are confirmed by the data: five years after obtaining the documents, 81% of the refugees still do not have a job in France. In Italy the situation it’s the same.
Sistech’s idea: to help women find a job in tech
So Joséphine Goube founded in 2017 Sistech, a non-profit organization that supports refugee women in accessing qualified and sustainable job opportunities in the technological and digital sector. In 2021, Sistech launched its first program also in Italy.
To date he has supported 250 donne Between France, Italia e Greece and aims to help 500 next year and expand into as well Germania e Spain.
But what does Sistech actually do for these people? “We offer language courses and intensive courses in technological subjects, baby sitters for children, wi-fi and technological tools such as computers and smartphones – explains the founder -. We have female refugees from all over the world who change in number according to geopolitical currents: two years ago there were many Syrian women, last year there were Afghan women, now many Ukrainian and Iranian women”.
Mission: to change the approach that companies have towards migrants
One of the missions is also to change the approach that companies have towards migrants: “Trained people who have a different culture and often speak three languages fluently are a real plus for companies”, he comments again. It is no coincidence that the project is supported by companies such as Cisco, L’Oreal, Terna and BCG.
Sistech literally changes the lives of the women who take part in it: “In Paris I met an Afghan woman who was a supermarket cashier – concludes Joséphine Goube – she told me that she had two masters and in her country she was the spokesperson for the CEO of a telco. She in France she has not found work for five years. I urged her to apply to the Sistech project: after six months she found a job in the cybersecurity field at Bnl ”.