Success Story of Halit Çelik
You can become illiterate in a single night.
He was once a tour guide in Istanbul and knows a lot about history and displacement.
Junior Web Developer at Cruncher Alumnus Powercoders
February 2020
Despite the fact that he had to flee the place where he had been living all his life, Halit Çelik considers himself lucky in some ways. You might ask how it is possible to not exasperate in the face of such unfairness. For Halit, it’s in some part the perspective that comes from being a tour guide in Istanbul and thus knowing a lot about history. He draws a comparison, saying at least he had more time to pack his things than had many others over the course of history, some being left with just 12 hours’ notice. Still, there can probably never be enough time to prepare you for a journey that snatches you from life as you’ve known it and that drops you in a place that feels worlds apart. In Halit’s words: “Displacement has much deeper effects on the lives of people than is generally estimated or anticipated. You can become illiterate in one single night.”
One more reason why his outlook on life is a positive one has a name: Cruncher. The two founders of this small web development company in Lausanne engaged themselves as volunteers, helping to teach the Powercoders participants in the class. And Halit met them at the Powercoders Career Day and convinced them that he would bring something to the table that might help the company develop further. Halit is a big fan of the Powercoders volunteering: “People with fantastic ideas to share, people with the patience for teaching, professionals, and amateurs, women and men, young and old but all with one single goal: to help the participants succeed in making a life for themselves.”
Halit had heard of Powercoders through a friend. With his pre-existing English skills and thanks to the fact that he had self-taught himself French and even attended an online C++ coding course, he was the perfect candidate for the coding bootcamp. The peak of this beautiful success story? Probably this 1st of March, when Halit will graduate from his internship and start a full-time position as Junior Web Developer at Cruncher.
“I would like to thank Powercoders for making all this possible and to all those volunteers, those beautiful people who are doing amazing jobs with Powercoders. I hope I will have the chance to pass on the message that you all, one by one, whispered to me.” We are convinced that he will succeed in doing so.
Halit was recently portrayed in La Liberté. See the article here. Also, he was portrayed in an RTS TV report about Powercoders. Watch here.