Palestine has a well-educated youth population, whose potential is stunted by high unemployment rates, lack of local job opportunities and a difficult security situation that severely restricts movement.
The project aimed to increase long-term income generation capacity for young Palestinians by accelerating coding skills, developing digital marketing and business skills, and strengthening a self-supporting community of aspiring freelance and salaried tech sector employees.
This initiative built on Mercy Corps’ established Gaza Sky Geeks tech education and community building experience.
PAL Tech Growth’s learning path was divided into three phases:
1. Community outreach: events and bootcamps were organised to promote digital economy
opportunities and to advertise planned training courses among young people. Community
outreaches was done through in person, remotely and through mixed modalities.
2. Tech Education: training was organised to give learners the means to find jobs on the national
and international market (English and 21st-century skills such as collaboration, creativity and
problem solving). PAL Tech Growth organised two kinds of training or “academy” courses to enable learners to acquire these skills:
- Freelance academy
- Code academy
3. Market linkages and employment: Gaza Sky Geeks (GSG) would facilitate internships placement
within local or international tech companies by partnering with said companies and matching
them to graduates of training programmes. GSG develops and facilitates these placements
throughout the selection and recruitment process, as well as during the internship itself:
mentorship, facilitating contractual arrangements and financial payments, as well as providing
access to commercial coworking space for individuals to work from.
- 474 people (including 63% women) graduated from 4 cohorts of the Freelance Academy under the Wehubit programme for the year 21-22 and 22-23
- 37 people (including 14 were females) graduated from 1 cohort of the Coding Academy under the Wehubit programme in May 2022
- 66% of its freelancing and 50% of its code academy
graduates continue to earn sustainable incomes six to twelve months after programme graduation.
