Transcriber: Camilla Guerrato Reviewer: David DeRuwe
I know that all of you are making a difference every day,
every day in your life -
at home, at work,
in your community.
But me, for myself, sometimes I feel I could do better.
I could do more.
And therefore, I want to share with you guys a very personal story today.
How I went from feeling completely powerless
to being back in the driver's seat.
Let me go back a little bit to 2012.
We were a successful startup,
we were working with the coolest brands,
and so this took me to Paris.
I was doing an innovation workshop for a famous brand.
And the workshop just ended, it was a warm summer day,
and I stepped outside to find my way back to the train station.
I arrived at the train station and my train was already there,
so I boarded,
went through the hallway, and found my seat.
On the table there was a news magazine,
probably someone left it.
I picked it up,
opened it,
and boom,
it struck me.
There was a picture of a girl, probably four years old;
she was sitting at the beach,
probably somewhere in Greece.
She was wrapped in blankets,
probably someone had picked her out of the water.
Maybe I have to elaborate a little bit why it struck me,
and why I felt this strong pain.
I believe it is completely random that I was born in Switzerland
and this girl in Syria.
It could have been completely the other way around.
I could be sitting at that beach, and the girl could be in that train.
And for me to realise that, in that moment,
when I went from riding this startup roller coaster,
being super-successful and cheered up,
to that point where life is just hitting you with a hammer,
that was an experience I'd never felt before.
And when I look back to that moment,
it made me come back home,
and I started, in Switzerland,
to talk to friends of mine about the refugee crisis
and ask them what are you guys doing and what I could do.
And I just realised we all came up with excuses.
Like we had families, kids, employees,
investors in my case.
There were so many "good" excuses to not act at that moment.
And I was surprised by how fast this hammer that hit me was fading.
So to be honest, I didn't do much.
Sometimes I regretted a little bit that I was not acting,
but I didn't do much at that moment,
and probably it is OK because I was not in that moment,
and it was not in my power to act there.
But let me fast-forward to 2016.
So 2016, we sold our company.
I was invited by the American government,
with young entrepreneurs, to join a team in Washington.
We went to Google, and we had a panel.
And two of these European entrepreneurs were speaking on stage.
One of them was Dita,
and Dita has a coding academy for women in the Czech Republic.
And the other one was Cornelia,
and Cornelia has a catering company where she cooks with refugees in Austria.
And those two ladies were very fascinating to me,
and I said I should bring one of their ideas to Switzerland.
So in the evening, when we all gathered in the bar,
I started to talk to them, and I said,
'Hey Cornelia, can I bring your catering idea to Switzerland?
I'm connected to the restaurant industry.'
And Cornelia said, 'Maybe that's not such a good idea
because it's so hard to build a catering business.'
And then Dita jumped in and said,
'Hey but you could actually be a coding academy for refugees.'
So the picture of this girl came up again,
and I said, 'OK, that might be a way how I can help.'
I have a big network due to my entrepreneurial life in Switzerland,
and I suggested that night to these two women
that I wanted to try to start a pilot in my hometown, Bern.
And that's what I did.
So I came back,
and the first thing I did: I went to a refugee camp.
I'd never been to a refugee camp before.
I went to this refugee camp, and I started to speak with the refugees and ask them,
'What do you think about the idea?
Would you support us? Would you join us?'
And I realised how highly they were qualified
and that they were not the people I thought they were.
And that's actually my label, I put to these people.
As I realised how much value it could be to these people,
I went out to search for funds.
We put together a team,
and already by November, so one year ago,
we were able to announce our coding academy for refugees in Bern.
And the feedback we got was overwhelming.
We got about 150 applicants,
refugees who wanted to join our programme.
We got over 100 volunteers,
people who wanted to coach and teach coding,
and people who wanted to mentor these people.
So we were able to start our school in January, this year,
a class of 15 people,
two of them are here today.
It was incredible how this bunch of young people were developing,
just seeing them.
Like, I was not teaching much,
but I was always sitting in front of the door
and waiting for them to take a break,
and exchanging with them to see how they were doing.
And so it was incredible, and the weeks passed so fast,
and already in April -
our school lasted for 12 weeks -
already in April we had our graduation ceremony.
And you have to understand that graduation for these people
is something more important than it might be for us,
because if you've lost everything,
and you get a diploma again,
that's a very, very important moment in your life.
But also for me, I didn't expect that,
but also for me, it was great.
They took me on stage, the whole team of us,
and then Lhamo, a Tibetan girl in our class,
she came with a white scarf,
and some of you might know what a white scarf is,
so, she was honouring our work,
and said 'thank you' in her very personal and cultural way to us,
And it was probably one of the best things that happened to me in life.
It was just really, really touching, and it felt so strong and so right.
So for us, that meant that we had to let our students go,
they had all found an internship, so they went off -
probably I felt a little bit like a dad, letting the son go to college.
It was great to see them go to internship,
but it was also sad because I couldn't see them every day.
But we kept close to each other,
and I read from them on Slack about how they were doing,
I saw that they were struggling sometimes,
but all of them put a lot of effort, a lot of energy,
and they really fought to be a part of our culture.
So that also made us start Powercoders Zurich.
So we are now six weeks into the programme,
we are doing very well in Zurich.
The class even grew a bit, so we have 18 students here in Zurich.
We had our first job interviews,
and I'm so positive that they will all also find an internship
because they are, again, a great bunch of people,
and the companies are so eager to meet with them,
to integrate with them.
I believe integration is not just teaching to code,
integration is actually getting them a job
and making sure that they can earn money.
Because I realised when Farid -
he is also a student from the Bern class -
he was the first one who got offered a job.
When he got his job offer,
I realised that, because for him it was not just 'I got a job.'
For him, it was 'I got a job, and I'm off of social welfare.'
So I think we should not underestimate what that means to people
to be independent again.
I have a very personal and very important announcement to make for Powercoders.
I've not done that in public yet because we received the letter last Wednesday.
We applied at the Swiss government to be a federal project,
and the Swiss government will support us with nearly half a million Swiss francs,
to build another six Powercoders in six different cities,
during the next three years.
It's incredible.
(Applause)
To put that a little bit in a nutshell,
what's happening right now to us.
And a dear friend of mine, Hannes Gassert,
you in Zurich might know -
he's a very known IT entrepreneur, and he's part of the Powercoders board.
He was doing a speech at our opening party here in Zurich,
six weeks ago,
and what he said is,
'If Powercoders would be a soccer game, we would probably be in the third minute,'
and what I would add to that, probably in the first game of the season.
So we are really, really at the beginning,
and as you heard, we are taking off for a big journey here in Switzerland
to put all together these great cohorts in different cities.
But what we also want to do, we want to open-source our concept.
We want to do it as TED did,
we want to make it available to everyone.
We want to make it available to people in other cities throughout Europe,
maybe even the world,
who are having the same opportunities or challenges.
You have very talented refugees and, on the other side, vacant IT jobs.
And so, please, if you know people,
reach out to us.
We want to empower everyone
to build a Powercoders and teach coding to refugees.
For me, I discovered that I have a personal skill,
which is somehow entrepreneurial.
I have a skill that I might believe that things are possible,
while others don't.
And I took that skill and put it in favour of people
where doors were closed.
So I was opening doors for certain people.
And I believe that everyone in this room [can].
So if you sometimes feel a bit like I felt,
that you could do more or do better,
maybe start with something very personal to you.
What is a skill you have you could put in favour of someone else to open doors?
Because I believe that the world needs all of us.
And I believe the world needs us more than ever.
So please join us to make the world a better place.
Thank you so much.
(Applause)