Democratising access to education, opportunity, and finance through Gig / Platform economy for refugees

Update Dec 2019 : With the help of UNHCR Kakuma and many global shapers we were able to launch Stepup.one to reskill refugees and connecting them to opportunities that pay- https://stepup.one/

Trigger :

We learn from many, We get inspired by a few but there’s one or two that stir us from within and propel us to act.

This 5 minute from a refugee who has never stepped out of his refugee camp at Kakuma was one of them.

He was speaking on behalf of not just the 185,000 in Kakuma Refugee camp but for the entire 70 million+ refugees.

I was propelled to act as soon as Mohammed Hassan finished talking. He is both a refugee and a co-chair of WEF 2019.

Context

"Connecting Talent to Opportunity" is one of the top issues in today's world. While this problem exists in some form or shape in almost all developed and emerging nations, nowhere else it is more profound than in the refugee camps of the world.

With Gig Economy exploding all around us, I think its only fair we address this dire issue of "not able to connect the talent at the refugee camps to the right global opportunity".

Mohammed Hassan in his opening remarks says "We need access to education whilst at the camp, we need access to opportunity. In a time when goods and capital move freely, humans are locked up in camps for years"

The Ask

Hassan is asking for two things ( 1 and 2 ) But I thought we need to add two more things to complete the cycle. He is asking for all the refugees to have

1. Access to a marketable skill
2. Access to global opportunities
3. Access to Identity
4. Access to Payments

For the time being, let us start with only local execution of the Job. So that they are not required to travel, that's a problem to solve for another day.

Back of the Envelope Solution

What if we train a 1000 of them as "social media marketing experts" and connect them to global social media marketing opportunities from both large and small enterprises.

Using refugees to do your "social media marketing" itself is a massive marketing campaign for anyone willing to experiment with these teams. We could potentially assign a top-notch mentor for each of these teams.

We can help them learn a few marketable skills from an "anytime anywhere learning platform" and at the same time showcase the potential rewards by giving them access to an Uber-like "Opportunity platform".

Every one of them must be able to see the opportunities and the associated gratification from immediate payments before they start the first lesson on "Social Media Marketing".

Simply put we can take the "training" and "opportunity" to them right at the camp instead of trying to move them to where the physical opportunities are.

Core Solution Components

In order to make this work, we need

1.Training platform
2.Opportunity platform
3.Payments platform
4.Connectivity solution at the camps

There are more issues to tackle when we scale. Right from Electricity to English, Bank Transfer fee to Visa - there are more and more issues as we dig in. However, let us solve one problem at a time.

1.Training Platform - At Infosys, we have built and been using an anytime anywhere training platform called "WingSpan". There are also other options from Google, Udacity, EdX, Udemy and many more to start training on "Social Media Marketing"

2. Opportunity Platform - We can use the uber-like platform called "Adia" from the Adecco Group. We can make it into a purpose built "opportunity platform for all refugees" across the world. Or simply use others like Upworks or Indeed or TotalJobs.

3. Payments Platform - UNHCR has the means to provide both identity and access to payments for everyone in the camp. However, there is a an extremely high transaction fee when money gets transferred to any of the bank accounts. We need to solve this over time.

4. Connectivity Solution - There is currently a 50 MBPS internet connectivity at the Kakuma camp provided by Safaricom. The cost of data is high. Desktops are an issue due to electricity but laptops combined with Solar power can make ends meet for the pilot.

Some more deep background material on Kakuma camp from the research done by Samuel Hall, its a year old but still gives a fantastic perspective of the people and infrastructure available at the Camp.

Next Steps

1.you can give me ideas as to make this one better, we have created a mind map where all of the ideas are documented.

2.you can join the team

3. you can connect me to Social Media Marketing experts who can mentor the refugees as they go through the process of reskilling

4. and anything else you can throw .... more than welcome.