Young Tech Leaders of the Middle East

Young Tech Leaders of the Middle East is a technology leadership program and community for conflict-affected and refugee youth from the Middle East. We aim to empower youth to become effective leaders in tech by building human skills, human networks, and a human-centered design mindset. Through our program, fellows gain access to skill-building workshops, mentorship, networking opportunities, and an intensive human-centered design curriculum that teaches a creative approach to problem-solving. Fellows then turn their learnings into action by developing a human-centered design project, localized to meet their communities’ needs. Our program has been featured in Bizpreneur Middle East, Bite.Tech, Iraqi Innovators, StartMENAUp, Columbia Global Centers, and more. In our first cohort, we trained 24 fellows (60% female, 40% male) from 6 different countries. In a survey, 100% of the cohort said that they would highly recommend the program to someone else, and 100% somewhat or completely met their goals that they set for themselves for the program.