The Palestine community that helps aspiring techies start a career with Google, Meta

The Palestine community that helps aspiring techies start a career with Google, Meta

In an environment where violence and instability haunt any prospect of a career, a Palestinian organization called Manara, which translates to “lighthouse” in English, has made it its mission to help aspiring techies attain a future where peace, happiness, and harmony are a norm.

“We’ve built a global community of engineers who jump in at just the right moments in a participant’s journey to offer an hour of mentorship,” Laila Abudahi, co-founder of Manara, explained to Al Arabiya English.

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Abudahi hopes to “bridge the gap” between the companies and talent, with a focus on women in tech.

“The talent pipeline is the biggest challenge facing the tech industry,” said Abudahi, adding that the diversity of talent “continues to gain priority” across the industry.

“It is no secret that tech has had a long-standing diversity and inclusion problem,” a Harvard Business Review report published in 2020 stated, calling it “arguably a root cause of many larger issues that plague tech” – including but not limited to justice and fairness.

Some areas of concern pointed out by the report are “unjust” facial recognition and a predominantly male trade that causes intrinsic biases against women