Migracode Gran Fondo Race

“Make friends with pain and you will never be alone” who wrote that, crazy. I am definitely not born to ride. It is now more than 11 am. We will be in this race for 4 hours. It was 30 degrees celsius a few minutes ago. Wait, the next road sign is a few meters away, what does it say…? Altitude: 1500m. It is the second big climb of the day and I do not remember how high we go, it can be pretty high based on the nice scenery around. Next turn, ooh, an old tower That can only be the top of the climb… Apparently, no. Next sign: 1600m. This is getting endless. Oh, one stronger competitor passing by, maybe he knows: “Hey man, do you remember how high it gets?.”… “1900m, I think”… “What? What am I doing here?”

Wait, let’s focus for a minute. What am I doing here? I am doing good, suffering for good. Like the 3 other Adaptive riders and the few other members volunteering to make this race happen. We are involved in a fundraising race to support a nice cause, raise money to enable students in difficult situations, learn front-end technology and join the Spanish job market. Adaptive raised 1488€, and the whole event raised close to 7000€. The Manager of Open Cultural Center (The NGO in charge of Migracode) which organised the event, said: “This amount may sound small but it is a massive help for us to continue running our program and get more students to learn front-end technology”.

This Gran Fondo race is just a small part of the collaboration between Adaptive and Migracode. For the second consecutive year, we sponsored the program. At first, we were lucky to get to know Migracode through an employee who is also a teacher in the school. He told us about the program right when, after securing our opening and growth in Barcelona, we wanted to make a positive impact on the local community. In Barcelona – and in many other locations – there is a gap between supply and demand in technology jobs, especially in front-end development. But there are also immigration waves where people with the right skillset and willingness to learn struggle to find jobs. Migracode bridges this gap by providing a 9 months intensive front-end and more generally, development life cycle training to individuals who have difficulties accessing the local job market. How can we not invest time, money and energy in this brilliant program which can only create a win-win-win situation between the company, the school and the students?

So yes, focus! And by the time I manage to remind myself of all this, I am at 1850m. Bam, bam, bam, bam, with a smile, we see the end of the climb. 30km downhill and we will be back in Ripolls, celebrate the end of the race, the success of the fundraising and spend the remaining part of the day in the mountains with all the team involved in the event.