Grant program looking to pay companies to hire tech people from Palestine

Emad Darabeh finished his bachelor’s degree in software engineering from Gaza’s Al-Azhar University in the summer of 2020. When he wasn’t studying, he took free online courses and worked with GazaSkyGeeks, a humanitarian organization that provides technical training and volunteering opportunities. 

Not long after graduating, Darabeh secured employment, receiving offers to work as a back-end developer at technology outsourcing companies and as a front-end developer at a Palestinian startup. 

With the support of the public benefit corporation Manara, Darabeh later secured a job as a back-end developer at gridX and moved to Aachen, Germany, to take advantage of the opportunity. 

“I went to Gaza for a family visit to attend my father’s funeral in September 2023, shortly before the war started on Oct. 7,” Darabeh said. 

“I was already on leave at that time and was planning to come back to work on Oct. 9.”

Darabeh was suddenly unable to leave. At that time, however, his employment became vital. His company granted him open leave while maintaining his salary and even contacted International SOS to see if they could help Darabeh get back to Germany. 

Long-term, remote employment helps to rebuild Palestinian economy 

Manara has worked with technically skilled talent in the Middle East and North Africa for several years, providing training and access to job opportunities. 

Seeing the impact of the ongoing war, Manara is seeking 200 companies to commit to hiring software engineers from Gaza or the West Bank in 2024. Several companies, including Microsoft and Talabat, have already committed to hiring.  

Another non-profit has also stepped in to financially support a handful of those companies with their first hires. 

Pledges, a U.S.-based non-profit that invests in technical training and boot camps in low-income countries, has committed a pot of funding for the first few monthly salaries of new hires that technology companies make in Palestine through Manara. 

The first round of the campaign, which aimed to have 100 companies commit to hiring in Palestine, ended at the end of March with 102 commitments. Manara aims to have at least 100 more companies make hiring commitments by the end of June. 

Manara has received 80 applications from companies wanting to hire with the additional grant from Pledges, and about half of those applicants are eligible, said Iliana Montauk, Manara’s CEO. 

Companies awarded the grant can divide the pot according to their needs as long as it goes to the salaries of those working from Palestine. For instance, they could use the grant money to hire one senior engineer or several junior engineers. That would also determine how many months of salaries they can fund through the grant. 

Having worked in the development sector for 20 years,  Sanam Kubra Siddiqui, grants director at Pledges, said a lot of energy is directed towards immediate relief. 

“It’s after that immediate relief, when it comes time to get back to some sort of normalcy, that people have a blockage,” she said. “It’s about rehabilitation rather than just relief.” 

Montauk, who previously ran a start-up incubator in Gaza, has lived through multiple wars. 

“One of the things that helps people get back to a sense of normalcy is to have work,” she said. 

“It’s something that takes your full focus, puts your life back into a rhythm and back into a community.” 

However, remote opportunities have been harder to come by than Montauk initially envisioned. 

“We have found a lot fewer companies to be going remote than what they had claimed initially,” she said. 

“And even when they do go remote, they are hesitant to consider having remote jobs in Palestine – even places in Palestine that are stable from a security standpoint.” 

Montauk hopes the campaign – and the donation opportunity from Pledges – will raise awareness about what a remote job offer can provide in the region and clear companies’ misconceptions. 

“The Middle East and North Africa have been overlooked for a long time. It’s the youngest population in the world but has the highest youth unemployment,” she said. 

“But it also has some of the highest rates of education and literacy in the world.”

“It’s the only part of the world where girls outperform boys in math and one of the very few places in the world where women are studying technical fields in universities at equal rates to men.”

Why does a for-profit organization need a grant?

Before this campaign, Manara placed engineers in companies like Google, Amazon, Meta and Qualtrics. In some cases, these job offers have been critical to facilitating an evacuation for the employees and their families, Montauk said. 

While some companies have not paid staff or contractors since the conflict began, others, such as Darabeh’s employers, have maintained salaries, she added. 

She said employers like Noon, an online retailer based in the UAE, and GetYourGuide, a travel marketplace from Berlin, have even stepped up to support former employees. 

The grant that Pledges is offering can help companies “derisk” their investment in the region for their first hire, she said.

However, Manara also plans to move companies that have applied for the grant through a strict eligibility framework. For instance, companies must have at least 40 employees and an internal executive sponsor in a technical or engineering leadership role. 

This will help Manara evaluate whether an employer can keep paying and supporting an employee once the initial grant funding from Pledges has been exhausted. 

Both Manara and Pledges want to ensure companies aren’t applying for the grant to pay lip service to a diversity and inclusion commitment by hiring an individual in a conflict zone or a refugee, Siddiqui said. 

Applicants will be screened based on their long-term commitment to the individual they are hiring and the region. 

One of the ways that Manara will be looking to assess this is by working with partners open to hiring new graduates and junior engineers. 

Mid-level and senior engineers are likely to have an easier time finding work. 

At the same time, she said there is more social impact and long-term regional commitment in hiring a new graduate. 

Manara also stays closely involved with the community it has fostered in Gaza. 

In Darabeh’s case, Manara provided eSims—digital SIM cards that make it easier to switch between telecommunications providers without needing a physical SIM card—for him and his family. Manara also connected Darabeh to various contacts in Germany to help him leave Gaza.

How will it work practically?

Since it works like an impact investor, Pledges usually makes investments that become cyclical, they said. They fund technology training and boot camps through debt and equity investments so educators can make financial aid available to their students. 

Educators can also recover their costs in the medium-to-long term and reinvest them into their next training cohort. 

However, the grant that Pledges is making through the #TechJobsForPalestine campaign is slightly different. In this case, Pledges will be staggering payments over a few months to the grant recipients chosen by Manara. There isn’t an expectation of a financial or equity-based return. 

Since Manara has extended the campaign, another funder has already approached them about making a similar grant or donation to support technology companies making their first hires in Palestine.

Manara offers several methods to help an employer hire a person in Palestine. 

“We have developed a whole guidebook on how to hire remotely from this region and which global payroll companies support Palestine,” said Montauk. 

If the employer would prefer to hire through Manara, that option is also available to them, Montauk added.

“Our motto is that we don’t want there to be any excuse or any blocker to hiring from Palestine.”

A previous version of this story referred to Manara as a granting corporation. This has now been changed to public benefit corporation. An earlier version of this article stated that Emad Darabeh and his family were provided eSims by his employers at GridX. This has now been amended to state that Manara provided eSims.

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