I moved to Sweden a few months back. I met a lot of women like me who came from different countries. Many of them had flourishing careers in their respective countries. Teacher, architect, economist, marketing professional, HR, lawyer, you name it. But now, in this country, they cannot find a living for themselves. The reason being many but majorly the language. The majority of them do not have fluency in Swedish. Moving countries/ continents is complex. And what makes it more challenging than when you lose your individuality, financial independence, and career. I could feel their pain and more so since I am going through a somewhat similar kind of situation as them.
The only difference between them is that I had project Sigsum to support me (for my job
), PyLadies Stockholm and the greater Python Sweden community. So I thought, why not share some of my fortunes with them. Many of them wanted to build their career in tech. And we PyLadies may be a help to them. I shared my idea with our excellent PyLadies Stockholm organizer and Python Sweden Board chair, Christine. She gave me the green signal and the mantra “go do it” :). I started reaching out to companies and communities for spaces. Christine shared me with a few contacts. But it was so hard to get a place :(. Since it is midsummer, none of the offices was working as it is supposed to function. Finally, Sunet came to the rescue and provided the space for the meetup.
June twenty-first, 2022, was the date for our meetup. We had women coming from different educational and cultural backgrounds. One thing we all had in common was that we wanted to learn a new skill to give life a fresh start and do it together. We know it is an uphill battle, and we are ready for the struggle. After a little nudge from me, the group, which was hesitant to give their introduction initially, started sharing their projects and ideas with each other. The “Show and Tell” was a great success (and the 50 minutes session was extended to 1 hour and 30 minutes). How lovely is that? People shared such a variety of projects with us. Ranging from different Python libraries, web design projects, projects on the Password manager, and why what excites them about Python and what they want to achieve. After that, I talked about the program “Python for everyone” - > what is it? And why is it? And whom is it for? It was an up, close and personal session.
We are going to have another mingle in the first half of August. And our Python for Everyone sessions will begin with the Python 101 session on August second. In the meantime, we will focus on building the foundation, so we are ready for our sessions in August. Join us on our slack channel and stay connected.
