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Comment by fairpx | Hacker News Reader

How about giving them good equipment and organise hackathons, so they can build the things they need for themselves, while having fun. There are a good chunk of developers among them with awesome ideas. Nothing beats a product built by someone, for him/her self.

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I dunno, I imagine more refugees are illiterate than have app development skills. These efforts may be useful further down the line, when you are trying to build community and sense of progress, but when a mother and child are sleeping in a park in the French countryside, the needs are different.

A lot of people have this strange image about refugees. These people fled from a war zone, not because they don't have any food or are illiterate. In fact, a majority of the refugees are here because they have money which they spend on the journey to flee their country. Among them are doctors, physicians, engineers, etc.

>In fact, a majority of the refugees are here because they have money which they spend on the journey to flee their country. Among them are doctors, physicians, engineers, etc.

Not only.

These doctors, physicians, engineers very likely belong to a subset of literate/educated people that are more adventurous, risk prone, courageous and flexible/adaptable.

Fair point alright, I guess I was thinking more about the youth population, if you had a 12 year old arriving from Syria with their mother, there is a very real chance that kid has had little or no formal education due to the disruption of the last 6 years.

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