Building technology with the people closest to the challenges.
Open source digital products, designed with communities and built by displaced technologists.
Yalla Labs is a non-profit technology studio that partners with charities, researchers, and social impact organisations to design and build digital tools that strengthen communities, amplify underrepresented voices, and create meaningful opportunities for displaced professionals.
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The gap we are addressing
Yalla Labs exists because we believe technology should be built with care, purpose, and the people it is meant to serve.
Many organisations working to strengthen communities rely on digital tools to deliver their work. Yet these tools are often designed without enough involvement from the people who best understand the realities behind the challenges they seek to address.
At the same time, many displaced technologists remain excluded from meaningful work despite having the skills, experience, and insight to build those very solutions. We don't see these as separate challenges. We see them as the same opportunity. By bringing organisations together with displaced technologists, we create technology that delivers real social impact while creating pathways for talented professionals to rebuild their careers through meaningful work.
Our story
Yalla Labs grew out of what we saw within our own team and wider community.
As conditions in Gaza became increasingly difficult, we saw Palestinian colleagues trying to return to meaningful work while living through extreme instability. This shaped our belief that work can offer more than income. It can create agency, dignity, connection, and a role in shaping the future.
Yalla Labs was created to build technology in a different way: through trauma-aware, supported projects that respond to real organisational needs while creating realistic and meaningful opportunities for displaced technologists.
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Our vision
We believe displaced technologists should be recognised as builders, innovators, and contributors within the communities where they live, not simply as recipients of support. Our ambition is to create a model that organisations around the world can adopt, connecting local challenges with displaced talent to build technology that benefits everyone.
Recent projects
Every project begins with a real challenge faced by a mission-driven organisation.Together, they show how technology can strengthen communities while creating meaningful opportunities for displaced technologists.
Guardrails
A browser-based safety tool that detects sensitive information before it reaches AI assistants, helping organisations protect personal data, strengthen responsible AI use, and improve prompts for more effective AI interactions.
Gaza Living Story
Gaza Living Story responds to the urgent need for narrative sovereignty in the face of imposed reconstruction plans. It preserves cultural and personal memory across generations, and opens space to imagine a future rooted in justice, care, and continuity.
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We're launching our first Machine Learning Programme
We're excited to be working with Founders and Coders to develop Yalla Labs' first machine learning programme for displaced Palestinian technologists.
Partner with us
Positive change starts with collaboration.
Whether you'd like to sponsor a programme, fund an open-source product, or explore a new idea together, there are many ways to support Yalla Labs and help create technology that serves communities while creating meaningful opportunities for displaced technologists.
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