In this blog post, Vytas Bradunas, our new Research and Prototyping Developer, shares his experience of relocating from the US to work in Kenya.

Just one week ago, I joined the REFUNITE team in Kenya. Born and raised in the US, this is my first time in East Africa.

I chose to relocate to satisfy a long time desire to work internationally for a tech non-profit that makes a positive impact on the world. At the same time, I am excited to be exploring how to harness technology to improve the lives of refugees.

Though some adaptation to a new country (culture, weather, people etc.), is necessary, I have settled in quite well seeing as the work culture at the Nairobi Garage–which hosts other tech startups– offers a nurturing and collaborative environment.

Sharing knowledge and experiences is all the more reason I look forward to working here. This new journey is already off to a great start. After I arrived in Nairobi on Friday, I settled in at the REFUNITE apartment, just a few-minutes walk from the office.

The next day I got to see a great aerial view of Kenya’s capital city, Nairobi, from the top of the KICC tower in town and spent more time with my new coworkers.

On Monday, it was time to get down to business. I met with my colleagues and got up to speed on the current project. They are a great group of people with different backgrounds: techies, designers, communications, researchers; from Kenya, Denmark, the US and Brazil. I think we have a lot to learn from each other!

We are at a very exciting phase of the project! We are re-imagining existing SMS and web touchpoints; how to make them even easier for separated families to use while at the same time building a robust platform to launch additional features. We have an opportunity to start from the very core.

This week, we started out by defining user stories; what users want to do on our platform, and building iteration plans for the months ahead. So far, we’ve had many planning meetings and I can’t wait to start working through the project!

Up next is exactly the kind of work I enjoy doing: spitballing new ideas, prototyping them, testing them with users, iterating, iterating, and iterating some more. We’ll be doing this with cross-functional teams which will include a diverse skill set, allowing us to take features from concept to production within the same team. 

A big challenge for me is to quickly build an understanding of REFUNITE’s existing products and user base. Chatting with the team has been a great experience as it helped me learn more about what we do and how we do it today. But to really build an intuition for the communities we serve will take more time.

Within the next two weeks I will be travelling to Kakuma refugee camp in northern Kenya. It’ll be my first opportunity to observe our products in use in the field!

And finally, it hasn’t been all work this week. On Thursday we had our weekly happy hour where beer is all buy one get one, reminding us of the importance of work-life balance: all work and no play….

What a great first week and I look forward to many more!

Connect with Vytas on Email: vb@refunite.org or Twitter: @vytas315