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MENA Coding School

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About MENA Coding School

 

Throughout our long years of experience in the nearshoring and freelancing field and our direct interaction with both global tech companies and Palestinian talents, we realized the chronic shortage of technical learning opportunities in Palestine and the growing demand for tech talents worldwide. Thus we launched a coding program in cooperation between MENA Alliances and CodeYourFuture. It’s an intensive & inclusive programming course for graduates, women, and unemployed youth in Palestine who want to become professional software developers in the tech industry.  It aims at reducing the unemployment rate in Palestine by equipping many students with the knowledge and skills necessary to become professional developers, creating global learning communities, connecting them with international and local tech companies to increase their chances of finding job opportunities in the tech industry.

 

Our Approach

 

The program includes a vocational blended (online & face to face) training that requires 30 hours a week of self-learning, group studies, practical training, and remote working. The students are going to learn two courses; a self-paced Intro to Coding course and an 8-month Full-Stack Development course. The program is flexible and inclusive, and it does not require the previous technical experience. It also offers support to cover any expenses needed to lower barriers for students to join the program. The program also involves events and workshops with local and international industry experts and business owners to promote Palestinian tech talents to the international market. 

 

The code training program stands on three pillars: 


Led by women

 

Provide a space for talented professional women to lead and thrive in tech. Based on our strong belief that women only need equal opportunities to shine and reveal their capabilities especially in the tech industry, we placed our training program in the hands of female leaders who showed potential for success and they never let us down!

 

Making Connections

 

In Palestine, youths and women are isolated and disconnected from the whole world due to political and social restrictions, which deprives them of having good opportunities to gain more experience and widen their horizons. Therefore, we launched “Ya3ni Talk”,  to provide a safe space for women and young generations to connect with the world while learning how to improve themselves both personally and professionally!
The program offers mentoring, soft-skills coaching, and a global and diverse learning community for our students. Throughout the previous months, we have delivered many Ya3ni Talk sessions on various topics, such as time management, learning new languages, building a professional online brand, setting Goals, etc. Through these sessions, we connect our students with local, regional, and international like-minded experts (writers, entrepreneurs, and tech recruiters, etc.) to help them build their diverse network and improve their hard and soft skills.


Learn & Earn

 

The program goes the extra mile by offering the students a unique opportunity to learn to code and earn money at the same time. As they work on micro-job projects, they will learn how to work on a team, respect deadlines, communicate professionally, manage their time, and improve their remote skills. As a result, they will have the opportunity to promote their self-sufficiency and sense of responsibility.

 

MENA Coding School Updates:



 

Technical and Personal Coaches  

 

Throughout this program, we aim not only at training our students on programming, but we are rather working on creating a diverse tech community in which students, mentors, technical and personal development coaches, and ambassadors all collaborate and support each other to reach their ultimate career goals. So far our program is led & supported by 11 ambassadors, 19 technical mentors, and 17 personal development coaches from the UK, USA, Tunisia, Jordan, UAE, and Palestine who are willing to support our mission in helping Palestinian women and youth pursue their dreams and land jobs in the tech industry. 

Awareness Workshops 

 

We conducted more than 10 awareness workshops (remote) to introduce the program to the women and young people in Gaza and the West bank and we collaborated with universities in the West Bank and Gaza. The workshops resulted in receiving more than 730 applicants. 

 








Students 

 

Over the past three months, more than 300 students from both Gaza and Hebron have joined the program; 241 from Gaza and 98 from Hebron. At the end of December 2020, 70 of them have finished the first phase (Intro To Coding), and they became eligible for the interview that separates them from the next phase. Finally, we ended up with 34 passionate students, who have the desire to master both technical and soft skills and complete this journey to become web developers.

 

Next Steps

 

We have started the program with the “Intro To Coding” phase that was available for anyone who has the desire to enter the tech field. It’s a self-paced stage where the students have a free online course supported by a community of tech professionals to help them get started. Students had to learn the basics of coding, build web projects and get an introduction to the five key employability skills needed for any professional job.





In the next phase (Fundamentals Course), 34 students will learn the fundamentals of coding and the key skills that will prepare them to enter the Full Stack course which will be the last and the most specialized and intensive vocational phase. They will build a core understanding of programming and computational thinking, learn advanced tools that are used by global tech companies, and practice interpersonal skills that all employers want; such as problem-solving, critical thinking adaptability, and teamwork which will get them an interview at tech companies. 


 
We’ll keep you up to date with our news, so keep tuned!! 

 

MENA Coding School | 2020-2021

2020: A tough Year and a Good Teacher

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The previous year (2019) was a year full of successful achievements, and 2020 seemed to be even more promising. However, the beginning of this year has shocked us all with the quick outspread of the Coronavirus pandemic and the closure of many startups and established companies around the world. It was not easy for any of us, and we all tried to survive by all means. 

 

This year has taught us that success is not a stable state but it rather depends on flexibility, adaptability, innovation, hard work, and most importantly TEAMWORK.

 

As a nearshoring company, we believe in the high skills of our talented professionals. However, what made us keep going during this dilemma was our teamwork. We depended on each other, praised one another’s efforts, and even consoled each other when it was unbearable. Each and every member played their parts well. And as we knew that what every member does complements the work of others, we all felt responsible for our survival as ONE entity. During those times of uncertainty, our mutual trust and our dedicated, collective efforts took us to new places.  

 

This year taught us that the support of our mentors, partners, and clients is an essential factor for survival. 

 

The local and global network that we have created throughout the years played a vital role in keeping us going farther. We are lucky to have such supportive mentors. They were so generous as to provide hands-on support and gave us pieces of advice regularly.  They were always there for us whenever we needed consultancy. Our partners assisted us on the way, and our dear clients trusted the high-quality of our services.

 

The COVID-19 lockdown made it clear that having a great experience and innovative ways in offering solutions to tackle painful problems and good market traction are not the only factors that create success for a startup. Having great mentors, partners, clients, and friends proved to be equally essential to sustain and grow these fundamentals. They all made it possible for us to continue the journey we started to accomplish our mission “to create one million job opportunities for women and youth in the MENA region.”

 

This year taught us that a clear vision and a noble mission would lead us to safety, achieving financial and social sustainability as a for-profit company with a social mission.

 

Although it was a year full of twists and turns, we remained committed to our original vision and to our social mission. From the very beginning, MENA Alliances helped many talented and professional women and youth by creating and connecting them with proper job opportunities. This year, we became closer to achieving our mission as we launched a training program in collaboration with our partner from the UK “Code Your Future” to train Palestinian women and youth to become developers so they can catch jobs in the tech industry. This great mission made us meet great professionals from the tech industry who volunteered with us to pave the way for our students to start learning programming from zero. 

 

We also signed more than four (4) new contracts with different companies from Germany, the USA, and the Gulf region to bring job opportunities for more than 170 professionals of women and youth in the MENA region.

 

This year taught us that connecting with each other is precious and valuable, and we need to learn more from others.

 

Through different online meetings that we hosted or participated in, we learned that our differences can bring more benefits to us. We got to talk to students, mentors, experts, companies’ owners, businessmen, consultants, employees in diverse fields, volunteers, ministers, and etc. And after meeting each person, no matter how much expertise or what type of mindset they had, we grew both professionally and personally. Therefore, to bring this joy of learning and growing to our students, ambassadors, youth, and even to us as employees, we created “Ya3ni Talk” sessions series in which we provide a safe space for attendants to hold respectful conversations with experts, mentors, authors, professionals, business owners and intellectuals around the world. 

 

This year taught us – all of us, that we need each other to survive not only the current pandemic but also any other dilemma we might face in the future!

 

Client Story: Masmoo3

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Ala’a Suliman, CTO at Masmoo3 in Jordan, explains:

 

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“We no longer need to divide jobs to be carried out by so many people. We just deliver the work to MENA Alliances and they do it professionally. We like the flexibility and full cooperation, working hard to meet our demands, prioritizing and delivering work on time.”  

 
 

Website: www.masmoo3.com

 
 

The Client

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Masmoo3 is the first specialized digital audio book production and publishing house in the Arab world. They aim to offer Arabic speakers easy access to a digital audio library for arabic books.

The Challenge

  1. Hiring qualified team members to accomplish large amount of work in a timely manner
  2. Reduce their operational expenses and save more money
  3. Prioritizing the large amount of work to be done

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The Solution

  1. MENA Alliances vetted, tested and hired a  team of  12 contractors in the West Bank and Gaza to
    assist with completing Masmoo3 translation and     localization work based on their projects.
  2. MENA Alliances oversaw and provided quality control for the work compl
    eted by the team of contractors
  3. MENA Alliances managed Masmoo3’s projects and the team of contractors at the formation“Tashkeel” part in Masmoo3 work process.

 
 
 

Resultsm3

  1. Masmoo3 reduced their operational expenses through outsourcing their secondary business functions to MENA Alliances
  2. Masmoo3 is able to accomplish a larger number of projects and increased workload
  3. Masmoo3 and  MENA Alliances continue their cooperation working on a variety of projects.

 

Improve your reading and listening comprehension in Arabic through Masmoo3 audio books”   http://www.masmoo3.com/

 

Now is Our Moment To SHINE!

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Every day at MENA Alliances, we get up with a passion for making a lasting, positive difference in people’s lives through the use technology. As we do, we’re continuously seeking to better integrate the technology to offer work opportunities WITHOUT boundaries for talent in the MENA region through our daily actions.

Today we dedicate ourselves to a new mission – to support businesses through enhancing their productivity and efficiency while simultaneously creating economic opportunity for MENA talent.

I am excited to share the first newsletter of MENA Alliances Group Inc.  The purpose of this newsletter is to provide you with sights, tools and tips to make the freelancing & outsourcing work for you and keep you up to date with the latest technology and business trends.

Through our newsletter, you will have opportunity to meet with our freelancers, customers and employees and learn how we’re pioneering the agile workplace.

As we strive to connect unmatched talent with opportunities, The MENA Alliances Group Inc.  and our international strategic partners are committed to creating new value for our freelancers, our customers and the communities we proudly serve across the MENA region.

Our unique online model is overcoming geographical obstacles and bringing new work opportunities for youth and women in the MENA region. Our freelancers will have access to more projects as MENA Alliances grow and we will provide our freelancers with additional financial security by providing guaranteed payment after a project is approved by a client. In addition, MENA Alliances’s unique quality assurance review of work provides women and youth the experience they need to enter the workforce and improve their skills by providing them with instruction and feedback in order to submit the best possible work to clients. Furthermore, we give freelancers more control over their career path, as they choose the projects they will work on.

We are working tirelessly to create more professional work opportunities for women in the MENA.   Our unique online business model enables women to break social, geographical and political boundaries to be engaged in the marketplace. We will help to provide them with skills that they need to work online through our free webinars facilitated by international specialists in different fields.

We have a new comprehensive business plan in place and are consolidating an accurate timeline that involves working with customers from around the world. We see the challenges ahead and continue to work tirelessly to innovate develop procedures to tackle them.

We thank our customers, strategic partners, mentors, loyal freelancers and contractor members who have made this journey with us every step of the way. They never stopped believing in the power of online work to create mass jobs for women and youth.

And finally, I want to thank all of our committed employees who have come together to make our online model a reality. Your trust, patience, focus and unwavering passion have inspired me over these many months.

Now is our moment to shine!

 

Thank you for yocf8ae0cc-b3fb-43c4-ab57-833be87fdebcur interest in The MENA Alliances Group.

 

I invite you to join our  talent network in order to be engaged in our free webinar series and get work opportunities. As we keep moving toward our commitments, we welcome your input and feedback on our newsletter and services and look forward to hearing from you.

Thank you for your feedback and support!

 
Abeer Abu Ghaith
Founder & CEO, MENA Alliances

Writing To Be HEARD

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 Writing To Be HEARD

MENA Alliances would like to invite you to start writing your thoughts, insights, tips and experiences in the freelancing or outsourcing field.  Please send us your article in Arabic or English to publish it on our blog at [email protected]. We will choose articles to print in our upcoming newsletters.