Initiatives for IT asylum seekers in Stockholm: Unite!

Digitization Skills supply

We have two simultaneous crises with a particularly strong impact in the Stockholm region: an unprecedented influx of asylum seekers and a serious shortage of qualified IT skills. Many of the asylum seekers have an IT background. If you belong to an IT organization with skills needs and make an active effort to take these IT asylum seekers into your company, it is not only a major humanitarian effort, but also a way to partially solve one of your own major challenges. Thus, the crisis is also an opportunity we cannot miss, for several reasons.

IT&Telecom and its IT Skills Council want to contribute both by making, and supporting, such active efforts. We have already conducted surveys at the Swedish Migration Agency, the Swedish Public Employment Service and among the many private initiatives that are already being taken. Together with Stockholm IT Region, we organized a breakfast seminar on Tuesday where we presented the skills shortage and had a discussion about what initiatives exist and should exist, to better utilize foreign-born skills.

Among initiatives worth highlighting we already have:

  • The Migration Agency's internship activities.
  • Incluso, which together with Stockholm Business Region (City of Stockholm) received funding from Vinnova to seek out asylum seekers with an IT background in Stockholm
  • Refugee Tech, an initiative from the startup world in Stockholm
  • LinkedIn's Nordic operations, which discusses operations with the Swedish Migration Agency.

IT&Telekomföretagen has just created a working group for the IT companies that are prepared to receive trainees. We will meet just before Christmas to discuss how we take the next step, probably resulting in a matching meeting with IT asylum seekers in collaboration with the Migration Agency in January or February. To the working group meeting, we will also invite representatives of the various initiatives mentioned above to see how we can collaborate.

Those of you who would like to make a contribution, mainly by offering some form of internship or employment for IT asylum seekers, are welcome to contact me at fredrik.vonessen@almega.se. Let us now do what we can!