From refugee to tech success story: Afghan entrepreneur creates innovative learning platform
As more and more countries around the world seek to close their borders to asylum seekers, we speak to the founder of an online language platform designed for refugees. She tells us how she hopes Chatterbox will redress the demeaning manner in which she feels refugees from around the world are received.
Afghan entrepreneur Mursal Hedayat believes that migrants‘ and refugees‘ experiences are undervalued and that language can be their catalyst to labour market reintegration.
“As a company we value the skills and talents of forcibly displaced people,” she explains. Rather than “hordes of people forcing themselves into Europe”, she has found them to be “a group of extremely hard-working people who are motivated to rebuild their lives”.
The young entrepreneur is driven by memories of her highly educated mother being “spoken down to” in the UK and only offered a job as a cleaner, despite her civil engineering qualifications.
Hedayat firmly believes that solutions to these social problems can be found using technology.
She believes that many current policies are scapegoating displaced people, whom she views as “one of the most vulnerable populations in the world”.
Hedayat herself has received many accolades and was named as part of Forbes’ 30 under 30 for Social Entrepreneurs Europe in 2018.
She has not returned to Afghanistan in many years but remains hopeful for its future, saying “the arc of history is long but bends towards justice”.
Text initially published on: France 24
