One Page Summary

Why is MTOP needed?
Only 1 out of 4 refugees will start a job within the next 5 years (OECD). By now only 1% of companies have actually hired a refugee (Deloitte). This also applies to highly qualified refugees – 10% of all refugees.
Highly qualified refugees have a high potential of integration as they bring professional experience, language skills and international networks to our country. By now there are no integration measures concerning highly qualified refugees. Therefore Austria experiences a high loss of potential.
The MTOP solution

MTOP’s mission is to make refugees´ potential accessible to the labor market, connect refugees to companies and break down negative stereotypes.

MTOP offers an advanced training program that offers various workshops, training and mentoring to prepare highly qualified refugees to enter the labor market. We enable them to find work suited to their skills, knowledge and experience. This also helps employers to find talent and increase the diversity of their staff.

MTOP success so far
By now 80% of MTOP alumni – 24 out of 30 - have started an internship or job with MTOP.
Until the end of 2018 further 100 refugees will profit from the MTOP solution. We expect to place 80 MTOP alumni on the labor market by June 2019.

How is MTOP different?
MTOP offers a real and holistic preparation for the labor market entry that provides the core knowledge highly qualified refugees need to enter the labor market. As we know our participants by heart as we work very closely with we can assure the companies of the competences and the working style our candidates have. This is why we can provide a high quality matching.

MTOP’s next steps
For the last 1,5 years we have worked on an offline solution. Our big next step is to digitalize our training program partially to make it more accessible to a bigger group of refugees. A possible SCHIP grant would be used for digitalization.

MTOP social business model
MTOP works with mainly 3 stakeholders – refugees, companies, state. All 3 stakeholders contribute to the business model:
1. Refugees – pay a symbolic participation fee (5%)
2. Companies – pay a placement fee (20%)
3. State – provides funding from 2 different ministries in cooperation with the EU (65%)
The missing 10% are covered by a foundation. 

As 25% of our income can be considered classical market income we perceive MTOP as a social business.
Once the digitalization has been implemented we expect the public share to drop to below 50% as we can train and place a bigger nummer of refugees more effectively.

MTOP Team
The 3 MTOP founders Julian Richter, Nina Poxleitner, Lisa-Maria Sommer have met during their time at Teach for Austria and dedicated their full time work to MTOP since September 2016. In July 2017 we have hired our first employee Haia Haddad. As a Syrian refugee she brings next to her competencies in Marketing and Community Management - diversity, cultural understanding and target group proximity to our team.