Name: How Business Can Play its Part in Tackling the Refugee Crisis
Uploaded: 2016-12-02
Duration: 4 min 28 s
Description: Grass-roots initiatives need help innovating and scaling up

David, you talk about going from humanitarian crisis, you didn't want me to use the word rescue because it's in the title of your organization, but rescue aide essentially, moving from that model to something more permanent lasting, so we're not losing generations of children for example. How can the people in this room help? And I was just thinking about it. I think what you're saying is how do we move from Band- Aid- Yeah, there you go, yeah. To sustainable interventions. And I think that there are two or three ways that the private sector can really make a difference. First of all, we love our government funders for some things. But governments aren't great at taking risks. and so the first thing I would say is that when we are trying to find a new ways of delivering health care, if Roger is still here some of the community health worker stuff that we have done around, well this is illiterate in numeros health workers and how we helped them tackle some basic diseases Private sector partners have been really key to innovation in that area. So that's important. I think, secondly, and we were talking about this at our table, there's a danger for the private section come along and think they've got to invent something new to do something. Our biggest problem in the humanitarian sector is not the answers we don't know It's the programs that we know work but don't get taken to scale because the donor base is so fragmented. We were saying at our table let's have a summit where the ten best but under scaled ideas are brought together. And the product center says look we'll just back you in taking, instead of helping That there are 200, 000 children of Syrian origin in Lebanon who get no education. There are 200, 000 in schools for half a day, but 200, 000 get no education at all. This is a country where there isn't a war going, there's no excuse for that kind of failure. We're helping 4, 000 kids this year. We could help 40, 000. And it's a matter of taking things to scale. And I think that scaling point is really important. The third and final point is that, sustainable programs need really secured delivery chains, they need enabling technology, they need proper management Those are all very very challenging things. If we're recruiting staff in areas where there's ISIS is in control, we don't want to recruit ISIS into our- Right. organization. We want to make sure that our technology isn't readable by the wrong Right. Sides. That kind of help, where you're bringing some of your professional expertise is really very very important. Right. Go ahead. And then I wanna get one question from somebody. Get it ready, cuz we have to do it quick. I'll feel the pressure of speaking fast now. First of all, the scale thing is enormously important. It is great to do one project once and say, all right, this is good and everyone is happy. And the children are smiling and they're learning something. But it is actually not worth a lot if we can't scale it. So scale is the buzzword and I think there's so much that you can help us to do that. So that's one thing. The other thing I want to say about this small imperative and what can we do, I always feel with refugees, and particularly refugee children, that we have stolen their future. Not once but twice if that is possible. First they have to leave everything they know, their home, their families, their country, everything they know. And then we also steal their future by not providing an education to them. There are far too many children who are refugees, that never get access to education. Just in Greece, which is a developed country, we have refugee children that have been out of school for more than one and a half year, this should not happen. We're stealing their future one more time And that is why concrete help for education projects and a plan, and a wish for the whole world that we will make sure that these children get access to education. No child should be out of education more than 30 days. That is something that I want to try to rally the world around is It's hard. It's a a hard ask. But it is actually a signal to the world, but particularly these children, that we will not steal their future twice. And not to mention the economic and political instability which runs against the interests. Absolutely. [ SOUND ]

Grass-roots initiatives need help innovating and scaling up