Cosmic #25 – Christian Hirsig

Integrating Refugees, Tackling Stigmas & Thinking like an Entrepreneur

“This could be me”.

When looking at the refugee crisis and witnessing the constant inflow of asylum seekers across the European continent, the human mind easily falls into stigmatization. We eventually let in the emotions media and politics seek to create in us and we get captivated in a way that is highly unproductive.

At the personal level, our ego loves to project ourselves on successful trajectories, where others look up to us and follow our journey with admiration. Sadly, we tend to take our basics for granted and prefer to focus on what we don’t have. It is much harder to deeply empathise with the families in need who are desperately crossing borders in search for a better life, running away from wars, poverty and climate disasters.

“This could be me”. That realisation was the starting point for Christian when he took upon himself to tackle the integration model for refugees on the Swiss IT job market.

Beyond being a beautiful change story, his project – Powercoders – is a telling example of how entrepreneurs can deploy model thinking and solves multiple problems at once, where government and conventional actors get stuck, or are too slow to react.

There is more, but I let you uncover Christian’s fascinating project via the interview.

Looking forward to your thoughts,

Dance, do more, be cosmic.

Camille.

Links related to the discussion:

• Powercoders – A coding academy for  refugees
• Christian speaking at TEDx Zurich – Youtube video

Link to the Spotify Playlist

Podcast on Spotify

Video Podcast onYouTube:

Video Podcast on Youtube