Using Microfinance to Develop Coding Talent (Video)

Video Using Microfinance to Develop Coding Talent (Video) 23

Posted by Roblimo on Tuesday February 24, 2015 @02:46PM from the by-their-bootstraps dept.

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Here's a quote from the CodersTrust website: 'CodersTrust is the brainchild of Ferdinand Kjærulff. As a Captain of the Danish army he served as recovery officer in Iraq after the fall of Saddam. He pioneered a recovery project with the allied forces, bringing internet and e-learning to the citizens of the region in which he was stationed. The project was a massive success and inspired him to eventually create CodersTrust – supported by Danida – with a vision to democratize access to education via the internet on a global scale.' A lofty vision, indeed. But with help from the original microfinance company, Grameen Bank, and the Danish International Development Agency (Danida), it seems to be coming true. Note: If you click the "Read" button below this paragraph, the video interview will play automatically.

Slashdot: Today’s guest is Ferdinand Kjærulff. He is the Founder and CEO of CodersTrust. You have probably never heard of it. If you’re an aspiring programmer in, let’s say, Bangladesh, you need to hear of it because this is micro-finance applied to people. So how does this work, Ferdinand?

Ferdinand: Yeah. So, we provide micro-finance for students to upgrade their skills, so they can earn more money on freelance portals such as oDesk and Elance.

Slashdot: Okay.

Ferdinand: And right now, in a country like Bangladesh, which is a country with 160 million people there are 500,000 registered freelancers and worldwide, the number is 14 million. But the problem for these 500,000, at least for some of them, is that they’re currently doing data entry jobs where the average hour is approximately $1 to $2 US dollars, which is still above working in the garment industry. But at the same time, we are seeing explosive growth for coding skills, which means that an increasing number of countries from the EU, US, Australia, they’re posting jobs on these freelance portals that require more skills and more advanced skills than just being able to do basic data entry work. So what we do is that we provide the micro-finance for students, so they can focus on their education. We teach them how to code, and based on their increased skills they are able to repay the loan that has financed their education.

Slashdot: So, it’s loans, you’re not giving away money, it’s a loan and they are expected to pay it back?

Ferdinand: Exactly. So it’s essentially an investment into the education of the freelancer or the individual student. We think of this as a win-win situation, where we would like to prove that it’s actually good business to take an education not only for the student but also actually for the microfinance institution because that’s really what makes CodersTrust scale, if it is in charity there would be a limited amount of money that we would be able to disburse.

Slashdot: But as it is, you have around 150 students now?

Ferdinand: Yeah. So right now we launched in Bangladesh approximately eight months ago, we originally launched with 20 pilot students that we used to build the product around. And so overtime we’ve increased the number of students and we’ve got more than 4,000 applications and from them we selected approximately 150, which is now in the program and we’re expecting to grow the number of students in collaboration with our main partner, Grameen Solutions, in Bangladesh and we’re also expanding the number of students based on the collaboration with the government.

Slashdot: Okay. Here is another thing, do you help them buy equipment? I know, I saw your website, there is a link to it on Slashdot now, it says that you only need a laptop and of course an Internet connection to work as a coder from home. No, do you help them get laptops?

Ferdinand: Yeah, so a lot of the freelancers that are students they already have been working online. So a lot of them already have a laptop but what we’re able to do is that, we are able to provide them better hardware and we’re able to provide them with a discount rate on not only hardware but also internet access. So being part of CodersTrust we’re actually able to do group buying on behalf of all of our coders.

Slashdot: So, what about just simple a US $200 ChromeBook, that would be good, wouldn’t it?

Ferdinand: Yeah. So actually of course $200 is quite an investment for a person in Bangladesh. So it’s still very expensive and it still sets kind of a limit for a lot of people and I think we’re trying to break down one of the barriers for access to education, access to Internet by providing these loans that will enable the freelancers to finance their education, but also their hardware. Another thing is for example health insurance, so we bundle these kinds of services into our product and thereby we create the kind of stability and essentially welfare that would not otherwise be a part of the freelancing market.

Slashdot: I know people who would like that in the United States, do you plan to extend it to our little first world country, our little country?

Ferdinand: Yeah, of course, the big wish here is that we would be able to provide paid education over the Internet. So I come from a country where we have the luxury of paid education. So we pay our students to go to college. So I was paid $1000 each month during my studies and that enabled me to actually start my first company and is actually very very empowering because it meant that no matter what background you came from, you have the same kind of access, the same kind of opportunity as everyone else. It wasn’t limited to the rich kids or the kids who had rich parents that were willing to do the investment. And I think it’s the same kind of thing we’re trying to do right now in Bangladesh, is that, if you have the skills, if you’ve been working hard on these freelance portals you are given the opportunity to take the steps up the ladder, so you can increase your earnings. And I think the most wonderful thing about this is essentially the impact it creates in a country like Bangladesh. So I’d like to give you an example of a designer who is now designing the platform. So he’s doing freelancing and he is being noted as one of the best designers in Bangladesh and with his income based on freelancing he was not only able to of course support himself, but he earned so much money that he was able to buy a magnificent house for his family in the local community and he was even able to invest in local companies. So being able to have just an income of approximately $1,000 in a country like Bangladesh—it makes a huge difference.

Slashdot: Okay. But now let’s take the other end, what about the programmers, the coders in Canada, in Denmark where you are, in Italy, in the United States where I am, what about them? They’re all complaining that the work is going to places like India, and China, and Bangladesh. Is this not also hurting the people in the more expensive countries?

Ferdinand: So it’s only hurting them if you think of the economy as one – like one piece of a pie, but the fact is that it is growing, so there will always be work for coders or people with the higher education in big national companies. One has to understand that the freelance market currently served by portals such as oDesk and Elance is for companies outside the big cities, the companies that would not otherwise been able to either access talented people or people with right education, or would not be able to afford it. So what this really does is that, it serves a new kind of market which I don’t think is competing with the existing labor force. It’s expanding the market.

Slashdot: I think the existing labor force might differ, and it’s all I can say, it’s like the guy in the warehouse, when they bring in the robot forklift, nyuk nyuk nyuk and it picks up the items, it’s not competing with him says the boss, but when that employee gets his termination notice, he thinks it’s competing. I don’t know win-lose that’s something that I’m sure the Slashdot readers can ask each other and have a great conversation about. I don’t know.

Ferdinand: Yeah, of course, it’s essentially very interesting debate, but I like to give the example of the garment industry for example that used to employ a lot of people here in Denmark, so just in the 1980s, we had a lot of people working in the garment industry and slowly the whole industry moved not only to the southern part of the Europe, but then moved to Asia, but what is remarkable is that the industry just in Denmark has been able to grow in terms of size, so now the people working in Denmark in the garment industry they are sitting on a higher level in the value chain. So they are sitting on marketing and design etc., so actually we didn’t lose any jobs, we created more jobs and we were able to be more competitive on the global marketplace.

Slashdot: Okay. That sounds great, and I’m ready for it, okay. Now, you teach people, you help them learn, what avenues do you use, you have your own school online or do you use others?

Ferdinand: Yeah. So right now, we are essentially a fintech company, so we focus on developing the financial technology to disburse the loan, and then we work with partners that are specialists within education. And then what we’ve done is that we aggregated different sources or different content from around the web, both paid and free content and curriculum into one CodersTrust curriculum. And we teach that currently offline and online, and actually just something like – the thing that we’re using right now, Google Hangout we use that a lot to teach our kids. I really think something like Google Hangout is really tremendously powerful, and of course

Slashdot: I mean, I agree. We couldn’t be doing this interview without Google Hangout, I don’t have the budget to fly there, I know it’s this time of the year you would rather fly to Florida and you don’t have the budget for that, do you?

Ferdinand: Yeah, exactly so that really opens up new opportunities, and it enables businesses and conversation and dialogues that would not have existed if it had not been for this online medium, and essentially what we are trying to do now with education is that we are trying to provide the mentors to teach more students, because that’s really what’s going to make CodersTrust aim is to have the rock star freelancers in each country teach a new generation of freelancers and we are like passing on all the knowledge that’s been accumulated so far.

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