Social Entrepreneurship: Solution to the Refugee Crisis
By: Sam Ahn
Tags: Crisis, Solutions, Sustainability, Social Entrepreneurship, Refugees

Tapping into the Skills of Refugees to Present New Economic Opportunities

Global Refugee Crisis

War, violence, persecution, and natural disasters have led to an unprecedented number of more than 70 million people being displaced from their homes. Their lives have been shattered as people’s jobs and incomes have been destroyed, food is scarce, and access to education has been cut off for the youth.

According to the UNHCR, more than 37,000 people are displaced every day. By the time you’ve finished reading this post, approximately 160 people will have become newly displaced from their homes.

The rising trend in the number of refugees is alarming and calls for sustainable solutions. Previous refugee-related initiatives ran by non-profits, have heavily focused on providing direct aid to these communities. However, these approaches focused on aids are unsustainable because of the need to constantly provide aid. Challenges faced by refugees are not quickly resolved and as a result, the average stay in a refugee camp is 17 years.

Unless the conditions are transformed, the refugee community is unable to become independent and sustain themselves.

Social entrepreneurs have come up with a unique and sustainable approach to help refugees. These social enterprises have helped refugees by tapping into the skills of refugees to use them as a potential solution to businesses and people in need of those skills, combining the passion of a social mission with an image of business-like discipline, innovation, and determination.

Humanitarian aid can no longer keep up with the global refugee crisis. Social Entrepreneurship is the answer.

NaTakallam

NaTakallam is a social enterprise that connects refugees with language-related income opportunities online. The social enterprise was found by Aline Sara in 2015 when more than a million Syrians fled to Lebanon, Aline’s home country.

Aline noticed that many Syrian refugees were highly educated professionals whose careers and lives were shattered by war. However, many were unemployed because they were either barred from legal access to the local workforce or unable to find work due to a dearth of opportunities available to refugees.

Aline connected her need to practice conversational Arabic to the needs of refugees who needed jobs and income. She came up with the idea of leveraging the internet economy to hire refugees as Arabic tutors and provide affordable language lessons to Arabic learners. Syrian refugees were fluent in Arabic and Damascus, the capital of Syria, used to be one of the most reputable destinations for learning Arabic. Most refugees also had access to the internet through their smartphones and laptops which they used to communicate with their family members back home.

NaTakallam recruits and trains refugees to be Arabic tutors and then connects them with Arabic learners around the world.

It focuses on teaching ‘amiyah’, which is a colloquial form of Arabic because it allows refugees to teach without a background in teaching and there is a big demand from learners who want to put their Arabic learning into practice.

NaTakallam has announced plans to work with refugees in other countries to expand its language services and provide tutoring for Spanish, Persian, and French. Furthermore, it has recently launched a service called ‘Refugee Voices’ which connects refugees to share their experience with groups such as local communities and schools who are interested in learning more about the refugee experience.

The service is beneficial to both tutors and learners.

Refugees who participate as tutors are not only able to earn income online but are also able to develop transferable skills such as English and communication skills. On the other hand, learners can practice Arabic anywhere and anytime they want at an affordable price.

Through these interactions, NaTakallam seeks to foster intercultural exchange and convince more people to support the influx of refugees.

Re: Coded

Re:Coded is a social enterprise that provides a coding bootcamp for children and young adults in refugee communities. The social enterprise was found by Marcello Bonatto and Alexandra Clare in 2016 when Clare witnessed the lives of youths affected by war and conflicts.

During her time in Iraq, Clare found that only 3 percent of the youth had access to education, and that employment opportunities were very scarce and that those existed were poorly paid and highly exploited.

She was surprised when she realized that many of these people at these jobs had high educational levels including advanced college degrees and started to question “how do you connect people affected by conflict to skills which enable them to find a job, whilst the economy around them was collapsing?’”

At the same time, Clare noticed the boom of coding bootcamps and the growing interest in technology in the United States. She was fascinated by how coding bootcamps quickly upskilled people and allowed them to work remotely. Inspired by coding bootcamps, Clare and her husband Bonatto adopted the bootcamp model and found Re:Coded, a coding bootcamp for refugee youth.

Re:Coded teaches the youth how to code and equips them with the necessary skill set to become software developers and tech leaders.

In addition to coding classes, the organization provides English classes, entrepreneurship training, co-working spaces, as well as tech workshops. Students are connected with job opportunities when they graduate, both local and remote work. Re:Coded also provides students with everything they need, including laptops, remote internet access, transportation, and food. With more than 450 graduates since 2017, Re:Coded is one of the largest coding and startup programs targeting refugee youth in the Middle East.

Over 85% of its graduates are currently working as software engineers, earning at least 3 times more than they did before joining the program. The program has also contributed to reducing the gender gap in technology as 40% of the program participants are females.

Re:Coded currently operates in Iraq, Turkey, and Yemen. It’s in the process of expanding its programs across the Middle East and Africa. Re:Coded will also be launching a new business, Re:Coded Labs, an independent digital agency that will hire graduates of the Re:Coded Programs to provide website/app design, branding, and content development strategy services to purpose-driven organizations. A part of the profits generated by Re:Coded Labs will be invested into Re:Coded to help offer its services to Iraq, Jordan, and Yemen.

WorkAround

WorkAround is a social enterprise that acts as an impact sourcing provider to connect refugees who need jobs with companies that need to outsource microtasks. The social enterprise was found by Wafaa Arbash in 2017 while she was writing her Master’s on the barriers to employment for displaced people.

Arbash, who is Syrian and still has family and friends back in Syria, had been passionate about helping refugees but realized that current solutions in place were not sustainable. Believing that economic empowerment was the solution to get refugees back on their feet as quickly as possible, she started WorkAround to provide sources of income to refugees.

“I was really thinking about what I could do; what people really need. What really is important is to earn an income.” -Wafaa Arbash

WorkAround works with large companies to provide refugees with online jobs involving microtasks such as data entry or transcripts. Both refugees and large companies benefit from the partnership as refugees can earn an income through online work and large companies are able to outsource these tasks at an affordable price while helping out these communities.

By providing online work opportunities to refugees, WorkAround has leveraged the digital economy to overcome barriers of refugees such as legal and logistical restrictions in host countries preventing refugees from finding employment.

Today, WorkAround has employed over 1400 refugees and has over 22 companies as clients of its services. Despite its growth, WorkAround has been working to offer other resources to refugees because it believes that microwork plays only a temporary solution in helping the refugees. Currently, WorkAround is working with colleges to offer online education to refugees as many have lost access to education due to changed circumstances.

“We envision a world where talent knows no boundaries, where opportunity doesn’t ask for status, and work is rewarded with fair pay.”

Social Entrepreneurship = Sustainable Solution

Compared to existing approaches and solutions that heavily rely on aid, social entrepreneurship is a much more effective solution to the growing refugee crisis because it serves a social need in a sustainable manner.

Social entrepreneurs not only understand the broad environment in which they work but have worked to shape those environments to support their goals. By altering the social system that creates and sustains the problems in the first place, these social enterprises have been creating significant and long-lasting changes.

Social entrepreneurship is a testament to the Chinese proverb, “Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime.”

The simple idea of providing opportunities to refugees to use their skills and knowledge to provide a service to those that need them has sparked an innovative approach to the refugee problem and has allowed many refugees to rebuild their lives. Furthermore, the positive interactions between refugees and clients is a great way to change people’s perceptions of refugees.

‘NaTakallam’, ‘Re:Coded’, and ‘WorkAround’ have all verified the idea that the influx of refugees is an economic opportunity, not an economic burden. The key is identifying the demands of people that are not being met and refugees who can provide that service.

Fall 2019 UGBA 192E @ UC Berkeley with Professor Cleveland Justis