I was shocked by reality. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know where to go. I found it hard to make friends, and keep myself motivated. I missed having a community.
That’s how Nasser remembers his transition from Syria to Turkey in the wake of the civil war. Even though he had escaped from one of the world’s largest and deadliest humanitarian crises, starting over in a new country wasn’t easy.
Despite having graduated top of his class in Medical Electronics Engineering, Nasser still found it difficult to find work as a refugee without citizenship or official residency. So he started to think about what he could do next. Back in Syria, he had taken several programming courses, and he started to teach himself again using tutorials on YouTube.
“I found myself getting more and more excited each day as I delved into the world of websites.”
Finding a community
One day a friend shared an application link to Re:Coded’s Front-End Web Development Bootcamp in a WhatsApp group. Six weeks later, Nasser started a new journey learning to code with the help of instructors and a world-class curriculum.
“In the bootcamp, I finally found what I wanted: a group of friends who shared similar passions and the chance to meet people who motivated me to improve myself. My instructor was a game changer. Not only did I learn a lot about coding, but I was inspired to think about what kind of developer I wanted to be. He taught us JavaScript, React and data structures in such an exciting way that I started to copy his method when I explained topics to my friends.”
Learning how to learn
After graduating, Nasser was offered a remote role as a junior software developer at Thinkific, one of the fastest-growing edtech companies in Canada.
His growth in the company has been fast, and he credits the bootcamp with instilling an ability to learn how to learn, so he can keep levelling up his skills. Today he works as an intermediate full-stack engineer in Vancouver, Canada.
The journey has been life-changing. He is now able to support his entire family financially, and he pays it forward by spending his free time teaching newly arrived refugees how to code.
Our bootcamps have closed, but the next step is still free. Source Code Accelerator is open to developers in Iraq, and anyone can start a self-paced Digital Futures course today.
