Bon Voyage à Moaz
Cruncher has been hosting two interns, Halit and Moaz, originally from Turkey and Syria, for the last year. Today, their internships are coming to an end. Halit wrote about his journey to Switzerland in a previous post. Here Moaz talks about his experience becoming a web developer.
Moaz Sabbagh
My name is Moaz, I am a Palestinian Syrian, I studied media in Damascus university. In 2013 I arrived in Switzerland. During my residency here I did many internships as a journalist and graphic designer.
In 2018 Powercoders opened a course in Lausanne to teach refugees how to code. I was excited about this project so I applied, and I was accepted. The course was for three months, and it was divided into two parts. The mornings were about learning the fundamentals of HTML, CSS, and JS, and the afternoons were for practicing.
I fell in love with JavaScript – and I admired the soul and the energy of the project. A lot of companies and freelancers offered their help, and there was a volunteer coach for every two or three students, helping us step by step to have a better understanding of the fundamentals, solving the problems we faced, and answering our many questions. And I had a lot of questions!
Cruncher did not only change my way of thinking, but also changed my character.
After the course, a lot of IT companies kindly offered us internships. My friend Khalid and I were super happy to have our internship at Cruncher, the Lausanne web agency, especially since Stephen and Marco who run the company had been among the coaches.
During the internship at Cruncher Stephen and Marco were supportive, patient, offering a lot of time and effort to make my first steps in this field. I learned a lot from them. I learned how to think about problems, how I break up a big problem into small problems and work through each one to find solutions, how I do research. Sometimes they included me in their projects so I could practice what I was learning. Sometimes they helped me develop my own ideas. The journey with Cruncher was amazing, it did not only change my way of thinking, but also changed aspects in my character. Thank you Stephen and Marco for all the help, support and especially for your friendship that I appreciate.
Today I am a student at EPFL Extension School doing a course in web development and what I am sure about it, that being a part of this field make me happy.
It has been a pleasure to have Moaz in the office for the last twelve months. He has an insatiable need to understand how things really work – a curiosity that is going to make him a good developer. We wish him the very best of luck in his career. If you are looking for a junior front-end you can email him at moaz_sabbagh@yahoo.com or contact him through his website moazsabbagh.ch.