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Re:Coded — Digital Skills Bootcamps for Displaced Youth

Iraq · Erbil · See the Iraq profile

A non-profit running intensive coding and IT bootcamps for refugees, IDPs and host-community youth in Erbil, Iraq, pairing technical training with local employer placement pipelines.

30 people
Participants in first pilot bootcamp (Jul 2016)
120+ people
Youth trained across Erbil and Sanliurfa (by Jun 2018)
~40 %
Female participation share (by Jun 2018)
400+ people
People trained across country programmes (by 2019)
85 %
Job-seeking graduates who secured a technical role (cohorts graduating Feb–Mar 2018)
40 people (8 women)
Graduates of 2018 five-month bootcamp (2018)
Re:Coded — Digital Skills Bootcamps for Displaced Youth

Details

Maturity
Scaling
Promoter
Re:Coded
Period
2016–present
Keywords
digital skills, refugee employment, coding bootcamp, IT training

Context

Re:Coded piloted its first coding bootcamp on 18 July 2016 in Erbil, Iraqi Kurdistan, training 30 local and internally displaced youth in web development. By June 2018 it had run four bootcamps reaching over 120 youth across Erbil and Sanliurfa (Turkey), with roughly 40% female participation, and by 2019 had trained more than 400 people across its country programmes, expanding to Lebanon and Yemen.

Results

Independent reporting found that 85% of job-seeking graduates from its first two cohorts (graduating February–March 2018) secured a technical role, and The National documented a 2018 five-month bootcamp graduating 40 young Iraqis, eight of them women.

Conclusions

The organisation's own retrospective notes an early pivot: initial hopes that graduates could win international freelance contracts proved unrealistic given English-language and experience gaps, prompting a shift toward partnerships with local employers instead. The programme has since moved to a largely remote-first delivery model (from 2019) and is funded in part by Germany's GIZ, continuing to operate a mix of in-person and online cohorts in Iraq alongside its other country programmes.

Implementation

Implementation detail (cost, timeline, staffing, conditions for success) is not yet available for this practice.

Data sources

Where this practice's information was retrieved from, and when.

Attachments

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