Next week, Techfugees will hack for the first time ever in Copenhagen thanks to our new local ambassadors: Christian & Bjørn! Read on to learn more about their plan for this event and more… 🚀
Could you please introduce yourself and your team to the Techfugees community?
The Copenhagen Techfugees chapter is very young and only has two managing members currently – us! – working on setting up our first hackathon. We met via studies at Copenhagen Business School, and have also worked together building startups in emerging markets in Asia.
How did you hear about Techfugees?
We met Josephine Goube, Techfugees’ CEO, at the Katapult Future Festival in Oslo in 2017!
Which are the displaced people’s main needs in your country?
During refugees’ “early entry phase”, asylum processes are a significant hurdle. After getting through the asylum process, the main challenges in Denmark are related to immigration services and long-term integration (language barriers and job search).
We have researched these issues via interviews with refugees, refugee integration and activation organizations, as well as other CSR reports on the topic completed by third party organizations.
What are your projects for the next days, weeks and months?
Planning the first hackathon, finding partners such as sponsors and collaborators 💪
During and after the first hackathon, we are aiming to add more Techfugees members to the chapter in Denmark.
Tell us more about this hack!
The hackathon itself is going to be a 48-hour event at the University of Copenhagen Southern Campus and ITU focused on the challenges refugees face on their journeys.
Each team, ideally composed of both technical and non-technical members, refugees and locals, will build a prototype of a solution addressing these needs. Amazing mentors, coders and storytellers will get involved as well!
With which kind of organization (tech, NGOs, universities, officials,…) do you plan to partner with?
For this first hackathon, we are strictly partnering with Diginauts, a PhD research group focused on the use of technology during refugee situations. The research group has its base of research at Copenhagen Business School and the IT University, from where we aim to funnel participants.
For the future, events will most likely also aim to partner with tech companies, NGO’s and supportive eco-system startup accelerators.
How can the Techfugees community help you? What are you looking for now?
We are very excited to be part of a global community and fostering new and helpful technological solutions to help the movement of people. The global community around Techfugees has helped us by giving the initiative in Denmark legitimacy, and it has been valuable to receive constructive input and advice from people at Techfugees HQ or other local chapters.
More concretely, we will now need help with material to build a nice package, to send to potentially interested collaborators.