case study: Techfugees
Spreading a crucial message in times of crisis
Sectors: Charity, technology
The client
Techfugees is an impact-driven international organisation, coordinating the international tech community’s response to the ongoing global refugee crisis which has left 68.5 million people displaced.
Founded by Mike Butcher of TechCrunch and headed up by CEO Joséphine Goube, what started as a Facebook group blossomed into a 18,000-strong coalition of engineers, designers, and entrepreneurs running conferences and hackathons all over the world.
The Techfugees ethos puts refugees at the heart of creating answers to the problems they face. The focus is on refugee talent, showing these people not as helpless victims but empowered agents of change.
The services
Copywriting and blogging
Srategy
Training
The numbers
A network of chapters across 18 countries
40+ delegates trained in web copy
35,000 words written and counting
The challenge
With limited resources, the team have chapters in 18 countries to coordinate, as well as project submissions from all corners of the tech world, and their own flagship initiatives to oversee on top of that.
Such a mammoth task makes it hard to get a consistent message across. Meanwhile, so much work goes into maintaining this huge, decentralised community that they risk simply preaching to the choir instead of focusing their communications on engaging new audiences.
The approach
Sookio’s involvement with Techfugees started in 2016 when we attended their inaugural Cambridge Conference.
This impressive event led to us pitching in with strategic support.
First, we standardised the way content was submitted to the website. Brainstorming what criteria would qualify a project for Techfugees support, we created templates which made these standards clear, cutting down on unsuitable submissions.
Defining a set of templates also meant anyone could express their ideas accurately, while still coming across like part of a coherent global effort, even with no prior writing experience.
That gave the core team time to get their own message out there, and we were more than happy to help. Fortnightly phone calls with Joséphine let us catch up with her adventures and write them as a series of blog posts highlighting her incredible work.
Meanwhile, it was important to us to make sure everyone was communicating to the same standard; our chance came at the 2018 Techfugees Global Summit in Paris.
Here, we were invited to run an afternoon workshop on best practice in writing for the web. Based on the training we provide to the University of Cambridge, we shared our knowledge on everything from tone of voice and content creation, to distribution and long-term strategy.
The results
Regular high-quality content helps keep the global Techfugees community informed. It also gives them a steady stream of articles for social media which they can use to engage with potential partners and sponsors, as well as refugees themselves.
Training, meanwhile, helps the team understand how to tell a good story that connects with a broad audience.
This helps reinforce their credibility as they engage with policy-makers and leading voices in the tech world to reframe the narrative around one of the biggest challenges facing our age.
With our help, Techfugees achieved
Enhanced communication with a network of chapters across 18 countries
40+ delegates trained in web copy
35,000 words written and counting
Our input has helped Techfugees evolve from a disparate network of isolated voices to an organisation speaking in unison.
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Their communications support allows us to advocate for a more open-minded world.
What we do is about technology, but first of all it is about people.
This is a vision shared with the Sookio team, and their communications support allows us to advocate for a more open-minded world and constructive debate on migration.
Joséphine Goube, CEO, Techfugees