The plight of refugees has once again been brought to the forefront of debate in the light of a wave of ‘populist’ movements capitalising on public knee-jerk reactions to the issues of migration and immigration. Alongside new US policies aimed at limiting immigration and the UK’s migration-driven decision to ‘Brexit’ come a number of other attempts to politicise a humanitarian response to the waves of migration from the conflicts and issues surrounding the Middle East.
All too often, the media has a very black and white portrayal of refugees – either destitute victims or aliens that only bring their inherent problems to the countries they settle in. There is a sense in such media portrayals that suffering and poverty go hand in hand with lack of education.
This is not only a misleading and unfair portrayal it is wildly inaccurate too. While it is difficult to gauge the level of education among the 5 million or so Syrian refugees, statistics from the Migration Policy Institute state that 39 per cent of Syrians who have settled in the US have a university degree.
Social enterprise NaTakallam, Arabic for ‘we speak’ began as a way to give educated Syrian refugees an opportunity to earn a liveable wage. Founded by Lebanon-born Aline Sara, the company partners up these displaced Syrians with people studying Arabic for language practice over Skype.
NaTakallam offers its users the opportunity to maintain regular conversations at an affordable price and today, the company is working with top universities in the US to become more of an educational platform, not just for language lessons, but also to build up a dialogue between refugees and students around the world.
Like many Arabs who grow up abroad, Arabic took a backseat for Ms Sara who was more comfortable speaking in French and English. After completing a masters degree at Columbia University in New York, in international relations, Ms Sara expected to end up working for a non-profit organisation rather than start up a business.
“I was looking for Middle East focused job opportunities and all of them required Arabic, but every option [to learn Arabic] was very expensive and private tutoring was around $70-80 per hour and I just wanted someone to talk with to maintain the Levantine dialect,” she says.
While exact figures are difficult to come by, it is believed that Lebanon is currently hosting more than a million Syrian refugees. The majority are not allowed to work legally and many have resorted to low-paying jobs like cleaning and carpentry, which does not “reflect the talent and skills” of the educated Syrian profile says Ms Sara.
The plight of these educated Syrians struck a chord with Ms Sara and it was then that the idea of NaTakallam began brewing in her mind.
For many students of the Arabic language in the West, Damascus was one of the best places to go for a year to study the language. The French Institute for Arab Studies, was renowned and students from Oxford to Harvard would spend a year studying the classical language there while learning the dialect from every day life.
Since the beginning of the Arab Spring, many institutions have been reluctant to send their students abroad, disrupting their education while uncertainties remained. While a few have resumed sending students to Egypt and Tunisia, Syria is unsurprisingly a no-go zone.
“I thought if there is this significant interest in conversational Arabic and you have all these Syrians who are qualified individuals, they could become conversation partners,” says Ms Sara.
NaTakallam would not provide Arabic lessons, but opportunities to have a conversation for those who already knew a bit of the language and their needs were mostly conversational.
“I had the idea in September 2014 and I joked about it because it was the trendy thing at the time to launch a start up. Being from a humanitarian background, I had a negative vision of start ups,” she says.
It was not until February 2015 that Ms Sara decided to act upon her idea, after receiving an email from the Columbia University announcing an annual start up competition – it was open to alumni and there was a track for NGO and social entrepreneurship.
“I saw the opportunity to apply the idea and I thought, yalla! I was clueless, I didn’t know the basics like what capital cost was. I spoke to a few friends and we applied and submitted the application.”
She worked with former Columbia University classmates Reza Rahnema and Anthony Guerbidjian to co-found NaTakallam and together they made it to the next round of the competition, but failed to make it further. Instead, they set their focus on a World Bank competition held for entrants from Lebanon, Egypt and Djibouti where they reached the semi-final stage. This time, they were forced to turn their idea into an actual business in order to qualify for the finals and so Ms Sara worked with the NGO Sawa to find some Syrian refugees who had good English and interpersonal skills.
The pilot paired seven people who were studying Arabic with Syrian refugees in July 2015 and NaTakallam began to take shape.
“I decided to keep sharing the pilot website with friends in mid August and within the course of one week, it went viral,” says Ms Sara.
That week, 150 people signed up to Natakallam, which propelled the company to launch officially after it registered in October that year.
Today, Natakallam has 1000 unique users across 60 countries who have engaged in more than 9000 hours of conversation with the 35 displaced Syrian conversation partners. Each session costs $15, of which $10 is given to the Syrian partner.
“We’re trying to give the refugees the minimum wage in Lebanon, which is around $400 a month,” says Ms Sara.
The majority of the displaced Syrians working for NaTakallam are based in Lebanon with others in Iraq, Brazil and Turkey.
Feedback from users has been mostly positive and some have had to confront their own prejudices about refugees during the process.
“NaTakallam has given me the priceless opportunity to have a wonderful Syrian conversation partner that not only shares his language with me, but also his personal interests and history as a Syrian in Lebanon,” says Valentina Cantori, who is based in the US. “This project is not simply about language exchange; it is a bridge connecting two cultures. Something we are so dramatically in need of these days.”
Ms Sara is hoping to help more refugees in the Arab world since they usually have the least government-aided help available to them. NGOs tend to provide aid to the most vulnerable refugees, while the ones who are just getting by can be forgotten.
“We have a goal of impacting 100 refugees at the end of this year,” says Ms Sara with focus on the ones who are “just getting by”, rather than the most vulnerable ones that can receive help from NGOs.
“We have access to people who have a PhD in physics, they’re highly qualified people but still suffering. We’re giving them an opportunity,” she says.
NaTakallam is now working with universities in the US to provide oral practice for Arabic students and foster an intercultural exchange to help break down negative stereotypes and change the narrative around refugees and migrants.
It has partnered with Tufts University, George Washington, NYU, Georgetown and Duke among others. NaTakallam is also partnering with Cornell University’s Institute for Integrated Arabic Learning to train the Syrian conversation partners in its curriculum to enable them to teach Arabic to beginner level students.
Partnering with universities also provides a more structured flow of work for NaTakallam rather than relying on users who may have an interest for only a short period of time.
Ms Sara is also slowly adapting to her entrepreneurship role and will be looking for investment to scale and grow the business. To date, NaTakallam has been self-funded and helped with grants and funds and most recently came first place at the World Bank’s Youth Summit competition in November 2016, but it will now look into raising capital.
“Our long term goal is to not only include other Arabic dialects and communities, but also other languages,” says Ms Sara. “Learning a language is always going to be interesting.”