 What am I going to talk about if it's not about getting rich or about group itself? I'm going to talk about poverty And I'm going to talk about how everybody can how it can happen to everybody and how I dealt with it And how I got out of it and the role that the open source community can play here between these circumstances so and I want to show you what the effect you can have on the individual level and the effect you can have for the whole family for the next generation, so This is actually about diversity and I can show you lots of numbers and statistics about why diversity is good for your company but there are other talks about this and there are other Talks that actually show you the benefits and how if you can actually earn money by getting diversity in your team It's also not about that. I'm going to show it on the individual level. I'm going to really take you along on a trip of my life and Show you how it's done in practice. So I hope you will join me on my journey for the wonderful journey I call my life so For the most part, I hope that you will leave this talk after it's over with a warm heart and a motivation to Look a bit further than your own Experiences So what is poverty? What I experienced I would like to call privileged poverty Because even though I didn't have any money the people around me did so I lived in a in a I live in a very rich country I live in the Netherlands and That's completely different thing. I live in a poor country. I had Ways to get my hands on resources that were not in my possession, but people around me had So it's just finding ways to get into the ethics of people who had the stuffed them with loads of materials that they don't use anymore And that's different if you live in a country that that has no support system or it has no And then not a lot not a lot of stuff around that you can get your hands on So was I poor? Well according to the statistics. I was These are the numbers that they use in the Netherlands I'm not sure if anybody Knows the numbers in their own country, but they use a definition. That's about Not just about getting to To leave the money to pay for your bills, but to have this for a longer period of time. So If you got one month of this income, then you're not considered poor But if you got like a half year of it, that's when you start to feel it and what are you feeling if you're getting poor? well, that's That's actually a kind of a staircase Because just imagine you lose your income. What would happen? Right, you will start using your savings if you have any maybe you can ask your parents if you have parents with money and That's what this will run out and then maybe you have to sell your car or Maybe you've got some jewelry or other stuff that you can sell and you can hang on a little bit more and All of this will run out and then when you've sold your car you sold your house You're out of your savings then you can go to the state that you can get on welfare if you know your country has this And this is the case in the Netherlands. You have to sell everything then you can get welfare And so now your own welfare. What happens? Well, you start to buy cheap folks cheap food Because the expensive food there and the precious food the fruits and the vegetables They cost more than just a pre and you call it the can stuff the Now and the problem is this kind of cheap food it contains more fat It contains more sugar. So your body changes and you can become bigger and you need to buy new clothes You don't have money for new clothes So you need to buy cheap new clothes and they don't fit very well and they wear and tear very easily And that's what people see people see you walking around and they they know something is off You know, it doesn't fit anymore, especially when your body type isn't good confectual type like Nowadays if you go to high name if it fits you you're very lucky But if you're big or if you need some medical stuff coming on You just you won't find good fitted clothes and this is what people see so for for example Like I had I had twins and I know if not I'm not sure if you're a well aware, but if you got pregnant And you feel like this in the beginning and then you get pregnant and you go like this And so I need wider shoes But why the shoes come from like a hundred euros or more if you're on welfare, you can't pay that kind of money So you you're walking around on cheap shoes that fits that doesn't that don't fit You've got numb toes around today and they wear very easily So you end up walking around you'll fit a shoes that's you wet feet and you're still paying more on shoes because these shoes Break more often. So now that I can actually afford Quality time shoes I'm able to pay them one time and they go over a couple of years and when I was poor I had to like every year I need to buy new shoes because they just you know, you get holes in them So that's being poor actually costs a lot of money and when you go you know walking around While you're in poverty, you know, you can't cut your hair anymore You can't go to the hairdresser. So you have to do it yourself and people notice And you're walking around in clothes with like little holes in it and people notice and when you go to Look for work You're not the first choice because people don't see somebody who's poor. They see somebody who doesn't take good care of themselves And that's there. That's the cycle where you're in so So being poor actually costs lots of money Now, how do you get? Into poverty. There are some of these But some of these parameters that are more statistically likely to end you up in poverty And I would like you to just look at them. This is just some of them and how many apply to you It can happen to everybody. Maybe it's a divorce Maybe a lawsuit. Maybe you get sick or your mom gets sick and there's help as hospital bills or stuff like that You just want to pay checks away from getting into poverty for me. It was this a generational poverty Obvious I'm a lady and Disabilities mental health in general. I became a single parent for a time I was employed but then very little salary and then it got unemployed. So this is the list and Let's start with this generational coffee. No, I'm for origin. I'm an historian. So I start with Old-fashioned photos. This is my grandma. This is my dad That's not me. That's my aunt the thing is If your family doesn't have any money, you don't have any money and They they are what they worked for seasons on farms and stuff like that. So they had like three families living in one home We was quite normal for for those days This is me cute, huh? Well, it's it's actually a very regular story my parents got divorced when I was four and In those days, you just moved with your mom and she moved to the big city, Rotterdam So we went with all my sisters to Rotterdam because her family lived there Now I'm not sure but if you see a kid like this on your school you should probably help out Because my mom I'm not sure if she had problems because she was poor, but she was on welfare. Obviously Single mom on welfare and she started neglecting us big time so I was thinking seven already seven eleven That was ruining the city just collecting empty bottles to get some money to buy some more food You know, you can very easily stop lift if you've got these big sleeves and stuff and stuff in it and Well There's those kind of situations and you would think in school that people would notice and adults would notice and it would help out Yeah, that's just television. That's not real life So what they see they just see a uncapped child And other kids have run away from her because you know CS lies Which probably is true because my grandma always used to wash our hair when we get in before we got to go to the living room With the smelly shampoo. So maybe they were right, but it didn't help and I'm not sure if you heard about all these resources researchers about social capital or cultural capital and that People have very low Expectations from people that have women or people from color or people that just find ugly even They have lower expectations and teachers actually creates your stuff lower based on how you look And that's what happened. So adults just saw a rude kid with behavioral problems And they figured it was just my characters is flawed so imagine the picket you faces of my teachers when in 11 when I was around 11 years take a Test from the states governmental test to figure out the level of education you have to go to and I actually scored like one of the highest in the class and they're like what it's do like is to fluke Let's see Copy somebody else's work because that's just how I look didn't fit what they expected a person to look like who had those scores Well This kind of got it personal right if it's too much just say so you can just run away so so fine and My home situation wasn't the best It got worse and I'm not somebody who just sits around Waiting for it to end. So I run away and what they do they put you in a system So I haven't told this in my work yet. So But this if you cut in the system a system is not good for anybody for not for any kid because it's just their job They don't really love you. It's just their job at the end of the day. They come home to the real kids So and as a child you know, you're not being raised. You're just being fed and that's a huge difference So within a year. I am already built and I went up north because I had a biological father And I figured I could go live there And they were lower middle class. This is my first holiday. He went camping like most touch to even camping in the Netherlands And you would think you like oh now it's going up. Well Not quite because now the gender aspect comes in because I'm a girl and My parents they were still our Christian and traditional So they figured as a girl you don't need a job. You don't need an education You're gonna marry you're gonna get kids anyway. So they put me on the lowest level of education Yeah, that was a local high school in the village I'm still angry about So but that's the gender aspect they don't expect much from a girl So I finished up this Malfoy sculpt like one year. I did it and then had so high marks that they had to They had to allow me to go to the half of which is one level up so I finished the half oh and I was 17 when I graduated high school and Yeah, I didn't like it so I went to live on my own at 17 and I did the Fabio, which is the highest level of high school that you were allowed That you're you can do in the hotness and I Got a little bit rebels So I was 17 living on my own in a little city. I had to pay rent. I had to pay for food I worked in the bakery at night and during the day. I went to a high school and Just talked so I Got the Mohawk. I Met the squad scene. I met some punk bands and And I became very proficient again in finding food and materials and stuff like this If you go shoplifting and you're looking like this, you will fail. So Prepared up I would go in and all the Security would follow me and Then the normal looking people would go and you know grab the stuff. That's how you do it So but I finished up this high school And went to university actually I was the first in my whole family to go to university. This is me getting my Now this would be finishing my university I got good marks in modern history Specialized in women's history did a lot of gender studies, you know really setting up for the market For the labor market. I didn't think about this. I just thought about this is cool. I want to do it and my Goal was to become a professor just to prove everybody wrong And it managed to get a teacher's job at university I also became a junior researcher And so you think like maybe now is Getting good, right? You're gonna earn some money, but apparently universities are very They don't give proper jobs They just give temporary jobs part-time jobs so on paper I worked 24 hours, but in reality I worked 70 hours a week still getting paid minimum wage for those 24 hours, so Still no savings. That's a Yeah, that's how it goes and you know During these studies I Was actually surrounded by people who? Irritated me a lot and you know why because they seem to have it easy. They seem to have What do you call it they did easy lines they had parents that loved them and parents that even you know paid their rent paid their studies and They just couldn't really connect and this is called something like social capital social cultural capital They knew about world events because at home. They had newspapers. They had books at home and I just got envy a lot, but every day. It's a struggle and every day you're feeling like you're an imposter You're not really belong and It just starts to wear you down. Oh, this is my research project my dissertation It will actually doing a dissertation on a biography of six sisters from the 19th century They were very very very rich six sisters Yeah, but it didn't pay me any money so life can wear you down and It's just it's a slow process. It's maybe you've been through it yourself You know you get this feeling that every day every day to struggle and you don't belong and people ask you What you're doing here because I was walking around in your for any university as a teacher with these piercings and Well looking a little bit different and at those days people were still like assuming that you must be a student or you must be wrong Or you must be in the wrong place Guys actually asked me in which porn movie I was playing I don't know why they asked me why they assumed such a sting But just based on the appearance that yeah that I had it didn't fit the university So I had a breakdown and I think it was about 30 years old. It was just too much so I left my partner and I went to live in a squat again because if you got no money you can go on the streets Or you can go live in a squat and I would recommend the letter This is the squad I was living in at the moment is getting evicted And I want to tell you a bit more about squatting, but I believe squatting is actually a lot like open source Yes, it is it is so In the Netherlands it was legal to squat until 2010 and you just The thing is if the building was empty for more than a year you could You're not allowed to break in the door, but the door would magically open And he would enter and you put in your furniture like you need a bed a chair and a table and Of course the beer and some food and then you could call up the cops and say like we live here And you will get something that's called domestic house piece or squatters rights And it meant that police or other civilians were not allowed to enter the building without your permission and if the owner wanted you out they had to go to court and To get in a fiction order So I spent a lot of time in court Defending the squats and what we did from those quads is a lot of political activism like this is one of the demonstrations we organize Think this was for refugees like everybody's welcome in the in the city And maybe we also did some squats for the for refugees because they end up on those streets a lot of time, right? so we had This is food not bombs at the time we just collected food free food from the market Sponsored food and we would cook it and then in the streets, you know handed out in order For people to start thinking about over-consumption and this is a free shop we had so but in 2010 this became illegal and then Of course, it didn't stop us. It just meant that now if you call the cops they would And they would more likely be able to throw you out So maybe you would spend some couple of hours or a day in the police cell and that's it and they would let you out again And this is the demonstration against this new law. This is my my band. Yay And we you know, of course, it's not gonna stop us definitely not because you need a house anyway So what happens was, you know at four o'clock? I would get a phone call, you know to get my crowbar out and we would go with my van with some people go to a Building that we had our eyes on and that we already researched open it up Put stuff inside barricaded next day You call the cops and they come and they either evict you immediately or they let you stay and then you have a new place to put in A new free shop or something like this So but in This period I was still very depressed burned out and vulnerable So I figured if I would take a break and go on a bike to Budapest Cycle to Budapest in a month that this would clear my head and I parted up with a guy Well, I didn't really know And who turned out to be someone who takes advantage of people. So I ended up pregnant This is on my twins. This is where the single motherhood begins. And I remember I was back in the Netherlands after this month trip to Budapest and Taking I was doing a gig and I'm feeling like Probably should not drink taking a test and oh shit. Yeah pregnant. So I went with my good girlfriend to the to the nurse and see what's one of those invasive Scan devices. I'm not sure if you're familiar with it. It's not very nice if you was looking inside me at my uterus looking for heartbeats and babies in a cement seal and silence and We were sitting there like everything. All right, and see was like Very worried looking and I see a heartbeat. Yeah, I figured yeah, I See a second heartbeat and she was like all this so, you know face full of worry and and and so Zilich a pitiful and We were like, oh twins like that's a great gift if you couldn't have one baby and just get to it in the same Time is wonderful so So I delivered to healthy babies, but the problem was the first problem was where am I going to live? Because I lived in a squad remember and squats are nice places very nice. You don't want newborn babies in this area No, so I went to the social worker from the hospital Because if you're cut wins, you're gonna get all your scans in the hospital and the social worker I pleaded with her like I'm very stressed bad for my baby. I'm very very stressed. I need the proper housing in the Netherlands You've got social rentals And she actually was able to get me into one of those social rentals. It had a garden. This is my garden So it was a very small place. I could get my hands on like 50 square meters The two bedrooms, but you know, it's it fits for one adult to babies perfect and this is You know in the Netherlands you've got private sector housing and Social housing in the private sector. I would have paid like 1400 euros for this building and because it was social housing I was paying like 650 euros and then you even get Substitution from the government if you cut low income, they give you some money back to pay for the rent So I was actually getting an affordable housing For my kids It's just that there's so little housing you have to leave to waiting list like 10 years before you can get Something like this and I got lucky with my social worker so Yeah, yeah, yeah Housing family, what are you going to do next problem these houses because they come empty. I need to put in flooring Painting I need to put in furniture. I need to put in a cooker a cooker your stove everything and you remember I was Pretty poor for a couple of years living in the squats. I didn't had any stuff. So what do you do? You open up a free shop. This is a free shop before my free shop This is from another squad and it got evicted and they did an item on the news Because it got evicted but you can see some images about how a free shop at those times looked And I opened up a similar one and it was very nice because even though I was like pregnant like this I had lots of squatter friends who just you know, you use something and then worked all night long to build this Cabinets and clothes racks in the in the building and we didn't know time I could open up the free shop with stuff that came from this one and It became popular instantly. So but what is a free shop? Do you know the concept? It got something in your country, maybe it's It's a shop where you can go without any money and nobody cares You just everybody can go in and take whatever they need and go out and that's it and It's a political activism idea behind it because we live in a capitalist society and Everybody's going like you need to buy stuff and you need to buy new models and you need to buy new fashion, you know and It just ends up with people with lots of stuff in their addicts in their homes that they don't use Dumps full of older models that are still good, but you know, they're old so it gets thrown out and this is a Way to get secondhand stuff or even new stuff one day. We got somebody's wine cellar Like we got a hundred bottles of white and red wine to give away. So all this stuff It's our own economy actually going on so This is how I got all the stuff I needed for my babies and for my home and I know, you know, you might not be able to do this in your own country But if you ever get poor just go on Facebook. There are a lot of free groups that are giving away stuff There are a lot of ways to get your hands on some money. This is me go into a secondhand market to sell stuff Just to earn some more money like this buy car that I got for free from one of those free Facebook groups So that's how, you know, you start making your own washing liquid wouldn't recommend it still smells Start that you are used to washing nappies washable nappies for the kids It's great for the environment. I'm not great for yourself You know, you start inventing stuff you start trying stuff just to get your hands on money. So that's how you survive so next is I Had a kid who turned out to have a disability For example, I needed to buy her Like this is this is my old house And you can see all the other stuff, you know, the brown cabinet white cabinet tables I got the table from somebody who wasn't in present at the time So I just took it And the rest I found it on your free shop or at the side of the road, you know, people throw out so many stuff Just you need to know when the dump is going and then you go into streets and you collect stuff that you need But some things you can't buy like my kid needed a bike a special bike for kids with disabilities It costs like 150 euros Maybe that's not much for you now, but in some point of your life, it might be too much So I went on Facebook and just ask people like Jimmy in place and they did so I was able to get her this bike so This is my little kid and As a baby you could already see that something was wrong, you know, she had not so much control of her limbs He was not crawling in the right way and went to hospital to hospital until we got a diagnosis It's a cerebral palsy. I'm not sure if you're familiar with it, but there's a lot of different Ways it can affect a child and This is her first wheelchair and as you can see I already also cut their own hair because you know, you can't afford a hairdresser I'm still sorry for the kid This meant That I was you know in this time I was still looking for a job I got rejected everywhere, but it's still looking for a job and then Some lady from the city came in and she said you need to stop looking you need to go just stay on welfare and Just be a provider for your kids 100% of the time, you know your mother you should just stay home and Take care of the kids and just don't start, you know, stay on welfare and you know, I Don't want that. I don't want it. I knew about my mom I don't want to be a welfare mom. So I Had new job requirements. It needs to be a job in flexible hours It needs to have high earnings because I need to pay for my kids and do you know Any job Or any sector that allows you to you know leave in the middle of the day to go to the hospital with your kids On a regular basis and it pays enough for you to support like two kids one of with special needs I know you do It's the IT it's the IT sector and Because there's so we all here talking about how to get new blood into Drupal There's also this whole talk about how to get new people into IT, you know And my car my city at the time they offered a free crash course in IT for people on welfare On people on welfare. So I joined it was insane it was four months of pure horror, I Don't know you call it blood and tears stuff like that, but I made it. I made it I Learned to build websites using pay-ha-pay P yeah, that one and And CSS and all the stuff some Laravel we didn't do any Drupal unfortunately and So I was working all young on the on the in at home with my kids around and starting building websites And learning about IT and this is me at the graduation of this course And my group was one of the top and we wanted a price of the best products that we made And because I want this price I actually got attention of a recruiter and he apparently he was there before but he just He didn't want to add me before because I was different and acted not like a typical IT person should act So but now that I won this price he was actually like I'm gonna take a chance with you and He had a two jobs lining up in Drupal at the Dutch government and he picked nine persons from the course to go with him To get those two jobs and he was allowing me to come in and I figured Governments governments Yeah, I'm gonna come in. I'm not gonna get in I'm gonna try. I'm not gonna get in Because you need a code of conduct to work for the government And you remember, you know squatting and police stations and stuff like that. I figured, you know, I wouldn't get in And to be sure I wouldn't get in I brought in the CD from my apartment With lots of lyrics political lyrics, you know, anti-capitalism anti-nazism and Anti-government pro beer and party and I figured, you know, I need to be noticed nine people are coming. There's just two jobs available First thing you need to do is be noticed. So I figured I Will bring it in and see what happens so And I opened up my laptop and I started researching Drupal and that's when I learned that there's something like open source and this whole community going on and I was like But I know this it's an international community Working together voluntarily to share stuff. I know this. This is like political activism. This is a social experiment This is something for me So I'm not sure if you feel the same way about Drupal as a Well, I was an anarchist revolution going on but in my mind, that's what it is. Please don't change my mind So I saw a lot of a lot of parallels with my experience and their experience and I don't know why But I actually got into the second round and then actually I got the job and The either guy that boss told me that he hired me because I was different and he hired me to Steer up this group of guy male developers that they had they were all like same type of persons They wanted to change things so He did it had it brought a lot of specific problems in itself But I got a job. I learned the job and this pays well and I could pay for my kids and I could join the Dutch Drupal Association Very grateful to be able to put my energy now in the open source community because I'm not squatting anymore. Obviously and I was able to get married and Bought a new house big house for my kid with a wheelchair and can just go you know, roll around And and this is something that you can mean on the individual level if you give a person with a weird curriculum vita a chance You don't just help one out. You help your own organization out because now I'm a Ambassador of open source solutions for the for the government. We build a Drupal distribution for the Dutch government and I was with my skills in communication. I Was able to help Make my organization more visible within the Drupal Association, but also within other governmental organization Organization so I proved to be actually a valuable new kind of asset for this organization. So if you give people with Different life path who look different than you If you give them a chance, you're not only helping your own organization and yourself, but you're helping this person and And the next generation I Got a new kid and I got a Drupal a t-shirt from from my team member at the time And as you can see that they now grow up in a carefree environment I can pay music lessons for them and they can for my first salary. I bought them a new bike It was just it's a life is and now we're shoes that actually fits and that are comfortable and That don't tear every every year So it's a huge difference that you can make and you can help make your organizations by welcoming just weird people and Give them a chance and I hope that's what you're gonna do And I hope that's You know, did you just just I'm not sure if you heard about all this research, but if they're if they're an application progress They tend to hire people that look just like they do and that's why males hire males and preferably, you know, if you're white male they hire white males and Please look further than this and you will broaden the horizons and you will be Subsidizing of not helping out the new generation. So that's it. I just want to remind you that if you bring in somebody from a poorer background, just be sure that you're Giving them enough money to sustain in life because when I was poor Very weird, but the university my university would run out of office supplies all the time. I Don't know why but you know and the coffee would just disappear and toilet paper would disappear and You know in some squads you didn't have any water. So I would just Go after office hours would walk We go on my bike with the jerry cans just fill up the water and take it with them So if you bring in people with different experiences, you need to make sure that they get a different salary So that you don't run out of office supplies. Thank you very much for your attention Thank you Esmeralda for a great story. Thanks for being willing to share your life like that. Yeah free tickets any questions So if you've got yeah, and if you've got some something to share you just want to share it without everybody hearing it I will be around and that's fine My question was did you have any IT knowledge before you stepped in? And how long did it take to feel comfortable with also other developers? I'm still not comfortable Like I became with the help of three Dupal tutorials on YouTube and I could learn about Drupal before I met this Government agency. I was able to actually get a feeling like what is it? It's a CMS system. What you know? It's a complex CMS system. Oh my god You know, you know the learning curve like all the people falling to the death from it There's a learning curve about Drupal. That's very famous because it's just too steep you fall off And I'm still not I'm a Drupal side builder But I'm not a very I'm not a very good Drupal side but the guy that had a second job at my At the same, you know at the same time that they are here two people, right me and another guy and this guy He was single so I didn't have any energy yet nice to put up the laptop and work some more and learn some more today still They still look at them like a what's your progress was his progress. Well, he went way farther. He was single He didn't have all this bad this baggage so he is now almost senior developer and and well, I'm still a Dupal side builder but you know that's still something and I've got With my other qualities I would become a communication ambassador They didn't had anybody to write articles or just to make you know do interviews or stuff like that That's something that I could pick up or organize stuff So there's just different qualities. They hired me to build websites, but I brought in more Yeah, but I'm still not Is that a question? No Got time for one more if anybody has anything else they'd like to ask No, okay. Well, thanks so much for coming and thank you as more elder