A lot has happened over the past few weeks in Afghanistan. It may take us decades to process what has happened in a very short period of time. What happened surprised and shocked Afghans, and indeed, the world.

As so often in the past, whenever there has been an explosion, attack or crisis facing the country, I immediately started thinking about what I myself have it within my power to do to help. In the case of recent events, after a week of sleepless nights, I finally realized that I must continue to respond this way. Firstly, I must keep my developers in Afghanistan employed, I must keep teaching Afghans how to code through CodeWeekend’s coding bootcamp, and I must keep helping Afghan youth find jobs through yagankar.com. The answer is not to stop any of these efforts; it is, rather, to amplify them. So, this post is to ask for your support towards this goal. Every steps counts.

Here is how you can support our three main areas of work in Afghanistan:

1. RapidIteration

I started RapidIteration three years ago. At RapidIteration, our focus is markets outside of Afghanistan while keeping the team 100% inside Afghanistan. I am currently employing fifteen talented developers who are shipping code from Kabul to London, from Malta to New York and from Vancouver to Paris. But fifteen is not enough. I receive multiple messages each day from talented developers in Afghanistan who have now become jobless due to the situation in the country. Government offices remain closed and many companies and organizations closed their operations in Afghanistan, putting people out of a job and cutting off a lifeline to their families. I want to support these talented youth who invested so much in their own education and skills. But I need more work to effectively sustain them.

If you are planning to build an app, let us build it for you. If your company has some work that it can outsource, please consider us. If you have a friend who is considering some software development and a professional developer can help, please introduce us.

In turn, we offer competitive rates — unquestionably better than India and Eastern Europe — and we guarantee our quality of work. Give us a try and help us grow.

1. CodeWeekend

CodeWeekend is Afghanistan’s first and largest developers’ community and has been actively educating the next generation of Afghans to learn to code for the past seven years. Since its founding, CodeWeekend has conducted hundreds of coding sessions, trainings and seminars for Afghan developers and anyone who wants to learn to code in Afghanistan, besides hosting multiple large coding conferences in the country. Since we were established CodeWeekend has engaged with and provided opportunities to learn to code and helped the up-skilling of over 1000+ computer science students and developers in Afghanistan.

In 2019, among many other programs, we started the CodeWeekend Web Developer Coding Bootcamp, and made this our main focus. With limited resources but a lot of demand, we launched our pilot program, completely free of charge. The pilot was a smashing success and we graduated 12 of 20 participants. You can find their profiles and more at: https://codeweekend.net

We want to expand our program to a remote, full time offering that will cover both Afghan youth inside and outside Afghanistan. As part of our offering, we are planning to establish partnerships with companies and organizations abroad to offer internships and job opportunities for our graduates. The Coding Bootcamp lasts four months, and includes a lifetime of coaching and mentoring for our graduates.

You can support our work by hiring or providing internships to our future graduates, sponsoring our events or donating to help us launch our upcoming Coding Bootcamp.

1. YaganKar

yagankar.com is Afghanistan’s first freelancing platform. YaganKar aims to connect employers with freelancers, and those talented individuals in Afghanistan as well as Afghans living abroad who want to earn a side income.

Employers can create their profiles and start posting projects and opportunities so freelancers and others looking for work can apply.

In Yagankar.com, there are over 150 talented freelancers available to be contacted for work. Please consider writing to them after viewing their profiles or post a project/opportunity on the website that they can apply to.

Thank you for supporting our work in Afghanistan.