Anything is possible if we act together - 5 years of ReDI in Munich!
Down memory lane with our Local Head of ReDI School Munich, Sophie M. Jonke…
ReDI School Munich - The Beginning
In the Spring of 2017, when Angela Merkel was visiting ReDI School Berlin, Dr. Petra Schütt, the leader of the Munich Employment and Qualification Programme at the City of Munich, read an article about ReDI’s mission. Petra is a leader committed to action. She called the ReDI offices in Berlin where she had a first conversation with Anne about how to get ReDI to Munich - and with it the promise to integrate more refugees and migrants into jobs in the high-tech city of Munich.
Back then, I was 23, taking a gap year to work at a startup incubator and volunteer at ReDI School Berlin. Anne asked me to do a German translation of the 2017 year book and I first read about the possibility of expanding ReDI School into my home city. I knew right away that I would love to be part of this exciting journey!
I reached out to Anne and shortly after she, Ferdi and me were on our way to Munich to meet Petra and the other amazing people at the city of Munich.
Anne and Sophie on their way to Munich
ReDI School Munich’s Vision Comes to Life
After some passionate discussions about how to make the vision of ReDI Munich come to life, it was clear that we would start this adventure together.
We immediately had incredible support from many different stakeholders. Once I moved to Munich and planned our first activities in the Fall of 2017: The city of Munich (in particular Bülent Bulut) recruited our first students and put us in touch with the right target group.
Our partners at Microsoft and Cisco agreed to a 3-weeks pilot program, offering up their offices as teaching locations and volunteers as teachers. 2 super committed volunteers (Samaa & Brad) helped me attend refugee events, set up info sessions, and spread the word about our being here. In November 2017, we organized a co-creation event called “Ideathon” with facilitators from IDEO & Design it! to strengthen the ReDI Munich model. At the end of the year, we held our first demo day at the Google offices.
Within only a couple of weeks - the Munich community was born.
First Demo Day of our Pilot in 2017 at Google Munich
Many highlights and milestones were reached over these past 5 years since then. The stories of our students finding jobs were the ones that kept us going in challenging times.
We recently had the honor of welcoming a global leadership team from Microsoft at our campus in Munich. We took the opportunity to let our community speak for their own successes: Bahoz, a participant in the pilot in 2017, shared his journey of the last 5 years. He was in Germany as a refugee from Syria and applied for many jobs in Germany - unfortunately without any success. He came to ReDI Munich through Social Media and joined the Networking class of Cisco. Only a couple of weeks later, he was invited to his first interview in Germany and got admission for an apprenticeship in IT. Now, 4 years later, he has successfully finished the apprenticeship and started a new IT role. What a journey! And… What an inspiration!
Marzieh, who is originally from Iran, came as a highly educated researcher to Germany. She sent out more than 100 applications - none of which she got responses or invitations for interviews. She joined our Software Development course and attended our HR Summit in 2020. At the speed dating, she was the star of the day, being invited to 5 interviews with tech companies of which 3 of them wanted to immediately hire her. Since then, she is a web developer at Supplyon going strong as an amazing woman in tech. She says “ReDI gave me access to a community, knowledge, and a laptop - and became my best friend in the whole learning and applying journey.” We just can't get enough of stories like these! (Watch Marzieh’s full story below.)
“ReDI gave me access to a community, knowledge and a laptop - and became my best friend in the whole learning and applying journey”
Microsoft’s Leadership visit at the ReDI Munich Campus, together with role models Marzieh and Bahoz.
The impact that our programs have, is an outcome of many different, dedicated stakeholders in our community. Alone in the last 5 years, 1,335 Volunteers and 225 company partners with 451 partner contacts supported ReDI Munich’s mission.
Anastasiia, one of our first volunteers, shared her story at a recent visit we had of the Munich Mayor, Katrin Habenschaden. Anastasiia is originally from Ukraine and when the war started in February 2022, she was supporting Ukrainians arriving in Munich on a daily basis, helping with translations or buerocracy. In a Round Table with our partners, Anastasiia shared the needs of Ukrainians right now. Felicitas Birkner from the Fujitsu Academy, who was participating in the round table, was one of the first partners to offer financial support to respond to a growing number of Ukrainians reaching out to ReDI for classes.
As an outcome, we hired 2 Ukrainian project managers (Nastya & Natalia), who within a short time developed and implemented a concept to teach 61 participants (in Ukrainian and English) with 21 volunteers - one of which was Anastasiia. Today, through this pilot, we are able to host classes in Ukrainian in all our programs!
2nd Mayor of Munich, Katrin Habenschaden, visiting the ReDI Campus in June 2022
From ReDI Student to ReDI Teacher
When ReDI Munich started, I was the only team member. Today, we are a team of 30 people, coming from 21 different countries, all of us with our own stories, joining the Munich team to make a difference together.
One of the longest team members is Khaled, who is originally from Damascus, and was a student in our pilot Microsoft class. He was a highly valued co-student, supporting all of his classmates, and acting more as a co-teacher than an actual student. Khaled is certified in Full Stack Development - most of it self-taught - and has been working on his tech projects and tech skills always on the side. After being the Student Community Manager and Tech Education Lead for over 4 years as part of the ReDI team, he now switched to a new role as a teacher for our full-time course in Front-end Development. We couldn’t be happier for our lucky students who have the chance to learn from such a kind, experienced and dedicated person like Khaled.
Khaled, first ReDI Student & now full-time course teacher at ReDI
There are many more stories to tell and all of them are exceeding the expectations we had when starting ReDI Munich 5 years ago.
During ReDI Munich’s first pilot with the city, our aim was to train 50 participants in two years. Now, after five years, we have trained more than 4,300 participants from over 60 different nationalities.
This has been possible due to the amazing partnership with the city of Munich, the incredibly invested tech companies, the dedicated volunteer experts, and the passionate ReDI Team.
This community is co-creating on the spot, making it possible to react to crises, like the Covid-19 pandemic, in an innovative way (“Mia Gehn Online”) or enabling spontaneous summer school programs for Ukrainian students.
And, the successful public-private partnership model with the city of Munich could already inspire other municipalities to start a new ReDI location - ReDI Hamburg - and won the prestigious “Eurocities Award 2022” - in the category of “Acting together”.
ReDI School Munich winning the Eurocities Award 2022 - here together with Clemens Baumgärtner, Referent für Arbeit und Wirtschaft München, ReDI’s Sophie M. Jonke, and Munich Mayor Katrin Habenschaden.
We are beyond grateful and proud of what the ReDI community and team has achieved over the years. And we can't wait for what the next 5 years will bring - together with you, we are sure we can do anything!
Written By Sophie M. Jonke
Sophie is our Local Head at ReDI School Munich - always inspiring us to do great things.