Something within me whispered: “Be the builder”
Former Gaza Code Academy facilitator Yasmin Hillis, a self-declared hippie at heart, talks about how Virginia Woolf inspired her to begin writing code
Yasmin Hillis studied English literature and taught English to children before shifting gears and studying web development with Founders and Coders, a peer-led coding bootcamp, where she recently finished her term as course facilitator. For several years, she’s been an avid practitioner of meditation and vegetarianism. In her spare time, Yasmin volunteers for local nonprofits and is teaching herself mathematics.
If Yasmin lived in London, where Founders and Coders is based, her story as a self-taught female programmer would still stand out. But the fact that Yasmin was born in Gaza, the most populous of the Gaza Strip’s five governorates, makes her accomplishments, and her relentless positivity, all the more extraordinary. In fact, with the Israeli border crossing mostly closed since 2007, and the Egyptian border crossing effectively closed since 2014, Yasmin has never left Gaza, a narrow strip of land just 25 miles long.
Yasmin, who graduated from the Gaza Code Academy, a joint project of Gaza Sky Geeks and London-based Founders and Coders, grew up under the thumb of the blockade, in circumstances most aspiring developers can hardly fathom: Gazans have, on average, only four hours of electricity a day, and 90% of Gaza’s water is unsafe to drink. According to the World Bank, Gaza’s unemployment rate, 43.9%, is the highest in the world. Unemployment among women stands at 55.2%, and workforce participation by women is just 19.7%.
