Oinofyta Refugee Camp Pilot Program Results
This was originally published in June 2017 on the Rumi Labs blog
Purpose of the pilot
In February of 2017 I visited Oinofyta Refugee Camp — located an hour outside of Athens — as a journalist. While talking to the camp manager, Lisa Campbell, one morning I heard about her plan to turn the camp into a vocational center. At the time she was looking for a company to outsource work to the refugees and someone to train them on how to use the computers that had recently been donated. Prior to being a journalist I had run an outsourcing company and couldn’t help but feel an obligation to help out. Three months later I returned to Oinofyta with a different goal in mind: rather than write stories, I wanted to help refugees at the camp find employment. Thus this pilot and organization were born.
The goal of the pilot program was to test the hypothesis that it would be possible to train refugees in a camp and find them work. I also wanted to test the hypothesis that work would bring psychological benefits.
Results from the pilot
Wages paid — €180
Lead generation task with Shafique — €50
Farsi translation with Shafiq — €50
Transcription task with Sediq — €50
Transcription task with Shafique — €30
Skills taught
How to create an Upwork profile
How to do web research and build lead a lead list
How to transcribe audio and video files and timestamp
How to use Squarespace to build a website
Refugees that I worked with
Shafique — Worked as a translator for the US Military in Afghanistan. Wants to be a programmer. Very intelligent, but currently suffers from depression which has caused him to stop learning programming online.
Samim — Worked as a supervisor and database administrator for a company contracting with the US Military. Studied computer science. Wants to open a supermarket in the US one day.
Sediq — Worked as a translator for the US Military. Currently working as a translator online for an NGO (10–15 hours a week). Lives in an apartment in Athens. Wants to study and learn new skills.
Faridoon — Also worked as a translator for the US Military. Volunteers for NGOs as a translator in Athens (they pay for some living expenses). Wants to be a web developer.
John — Didn’t have any professional experience in Afghanistan (he’s 20), but has been teaching English and translating for NGOs. Taught himself English. He wants to go to school and study to be a doctor.
Jawid — Studied IT and web design in Afghanistan. Currently doing volunteer work for NGOs as a translator. Wants to relearn web design skills.
Success Stories
A story about Faridoon
Towards the end of the month I spent a few days in Athens talking to refugees at some of the squats that have been set up in Exarchia. One night I got a message from Faridoon, who lives at Oinofyta half the time and Athens the rest, asking me to teach him how to build a website. We hung out that night and I agreed to show him how to use Squarespace the next day.
The next day when we were supposed to meet I sent him an address and he responded to tell me that it was too far and he didn’t have good shoes for walking. Knowing this was some kind of excuse — since it was about 5 minutes of walking — I walked over to the square where I’d left him the last night. He told me that there was a terrorist attack in Kabul that day killing 90 people. The bomb had gone off in the same neighborhood that he used to work.
We sat and talked for a couple hours and he told me stories about what it was like to live in Afghanistan. By the end of the evening we agreed to meet the next day.
The next morning I taught him how to use Squarespace and we started working on a website. For the last year he’s translated for refugees who don’t speak English. Often times that meant someone coming into his tent to interrupt him. So we decided to automate that. We built a site that explained important information like bus timetables, registration instructions, and other FAQs in Farsi, Urdu, and English. We even added audio versions for people who were illiterate — which is a high percentage unfortunately.
It wasn’t until we published the site to a domain, and he jumped out of his seat, that I began to notice his mood change. Once I did, I saw a night and day difference. After finishing up he walked me to the metro station (he’d been protective like that the entire time). Before getting on the train we pulled up the site on my phone and he jumped up again. Then he hugged me and said, “My entire week has been terrible. But right now I’m happy.” Later that night I saw him one last time and overheard him telling a girl that he was learning to code, and again heard him describe how transformative it had been to his mood.
As I look back on the last month I see a lot more failures than successes. The barriers — both logistical and emotional — are immense. But my experience with Faridoon gave me a glimpse into what work can do, not only for a person’s financial independence, but for their mental well-being.
A story about John
One day John, who is 20 years old and speaks very good English, pulled me aside to talk. It was the third week and we had developed a good relationship by that point. He told me, how difficult things had been over the last year and what the camp life had done to his mental health.
I asked him why he wasn’t working as a translator since doing so would allow him to live in an apartment in Athens. He told me that he didn’t know how to apply or what the process was like.
The next day we met in the computer lab and worked on his CV. Then we looked up a few organizations that he could apply to work for. Interestingly, he already had a CV and already knew some organizations. So I didn’t really help other than providing some motivation and support.
Then two days later he came up to me in the community garden and said, “Michael, I have amazing news. I’m so happy. I got a job.” He told me that he went to Athens the day after we met and applied at an organization and they gave him an offer. Again, I saw a transformation in mood from despair to excitement proving that work is as much a financial enabler as a source of happiness and hope.
A story about Shafique
The day after Shafique worked on his first task — a lead generation task for my friend’s company — we met to discuss his longer term goals. I explained that goal setting had helped me a lot in my life and so I suggested he write out his own goals. When we sat down to discuss them he told me that he wants to be a freelancer and eventually learn to do freelance programming.
“The good thing about being a freelancer is that I can work in Greece, or Belgium, or Austria. I don’t have to be anywhere specifically,” he said. And then he told me that the reason that he hadn’t gotten a job yet or applied for asylum was because he didn’t want to commit to Greece. This explained something that had always puzzled me: why wasn’t someone as smart as Shafique working? But it also opened my eyes to the benefits of freelance work for refugees.
Many refugees see their living situation as temporary. As a result, even those with the skills to work, are sitting idly by as they figure out where they will live next. Working in Greece requires signing a contract and the act of doing that is a mental indication that Greece is home. For people who want to relocate (legally or illegally), that is enough of a barrier to not work.
As I write this I am messaging Shafique on Facebook talking about a freelance project that he’s going to work on. He might be in Oinofyta, or Patra, or Vienna when he does the work, but the important thing is that he’s doing work. And the reason is because it doesn’t require the location commitment that all other work opportunities require.
Challenges and lessons learned
Stress leads to irrational behavior
The biggest challenge that I saw was the emotional complexity that comes with being a refugee. Almost everyone that I worked with suffers from a varying degree of depression. Many of them are uncertain about their future (especially those who haven’t received asylum). And all of them were constantly stressed. As a result, they frequently make erratic and irrational decisions.
Many scientific papers have proven that stress leads to irrational behavior and decision-making. (See The Economist: Poor Behavior). I saw this first hand with one of the refugees I worked with who suffers from the most emotional trauma and has no family to support him. He told me on multiple occasions that he wants nothing more than to get out of the camp. Since coming to Oinofyta he’s started smoking cigarettes, drinking alcohol, smoking marijuana, and stopped teaching himself programming. But when I asked him if he wanted to work he told me, “Money won’t make me happy. I think I should teach English to people in the camp.” I told him that the two didn’t add up. Money would make him happy because it’d get him out of the camp. He agreed and said, “I’m bewildered right now. I don’t know what to do.”
Stress also makes the simplest decisions, like what to eat for dinner, more difficult. As a result, the people I worked with were much more “busy” than you’d expect. This presented challenges when I was trying to teach skills because they weren’t available to work together despite having very little to do each day. Cooking, laundry, and showering could take hours.
As a result I found it difficult to teach skills. We’d make progress one day, and then the next day I’d receive a text informing me that they were in Athens. “Why are you in Athens?” I’d ask, expecting something to do with an asylum request. “I just needed to get out of the camp. I’m eating Afghan food.” At first this was frustrating, but the longer I stayed in Oinofyta the more I found myself wanting to make the same irrational decisions. The stress led me to want to drink more alcohol, get out of the camp, etc. The more that my own emotions became affected the more I understood how difficult it is to focus in such an environment.
I believe that stress and emotional trauma are one of the primary reasons that the most intelligent people in the camp aren’t working. It’s the same reason that one refugee spent his money on a TV instead of saving it, and many spend a significant portion of his $150 each month on cigarettes. Stress leads to irrational behavior and decision making. It makes the easiest things, like submitting a CV, difficult. It makes people prioritize the present and discount the future.
All of these things present challenges in creating a work environment at Oinofyta. However, they are also realities of refugees no matter where they live. Even a refugee who receives asylum and moves into an apartment would suffer from stress. But I think that the camp exaggerates the problem since people have very little personal space, have difficulty sleeping, and don’t know whether they will receive asylum or not.
Time is non-existent
One of the jokes that I heard about Oinofyta when I visited in February was that everything runs on “Afghan time.” Community meetings that are supposed to start at 9pm often start at 9:45pm. If you want to meet someone at 1pm, expect them to arrive at 1:30pm. This joke was a reality and presented a lot of challenges when I tried training people.
One day I was supposed to meet Shafique at 1pm to work on his Upwork profile. By 2pm I still hadn’t heard from him. Then at 2:30 I got a message telling me that he had just woken up. “I didn’t sleep until 7am last night.” Then after 30 minutes I messaged him to see where he was and didn’t hear back for another 2 hours. By 4pm he finally showed up and told me that he fell back asleep. So 3 hours after we were supposed to begin we got started. That night there was a volunteer dinner at 6pm so I had to leave by then. That meant that we only had 2 hours to work together.
In all the meetings I had Samim was the only person to show up on time. But that was only once and it was probably lucky that he happened to be walking by at 4pm. Every other time people were late by anywhere from 15 minutes to 3 hours.
The dominant theory in the camp is that people are late in part because of their culture, but primarily because they aren’t used to being on a schedule. In the camp very few people work so they operate on a natural clock. When they are ready to wake up they do. When they are hungry they cook food. When they are tired they nap. And so on.
When I spoke with Niaomh, who runs the sewing shop at Oinofyta, she told me that she frequently has people show up 15 minutes late. But she is able to get them to show up on time when she pays them less for the hours they weren’t at work. So I think that this problem can be fixed if people have something to look forward to each day.
Close living quarters prevents proper sleep
One of the reasons for the tardiness I described is the close living quarters. With up to 14 people living in a room, it’s impossible to control the noise and light in a room. As a result, people like Shafique wait until the last person is asleep to go to sleep themselves. This has set the clock back and now many people go to bed around dawn each day since it’s quietest in the rooms between 4–11am.
One night I slept in Samim’s room to understand the problem more. We ate dinner at midnight. The lights didn’t go out until 5:30am (even though some people were trying to sleep). All night people came in the room talking loudly and singing. One of the unaccompanied minors was sick and coughed all night. The person sleeping below me was texting with his notification and typing sounds turned all the way up. I didn’t get to sleep until 5:30am and even then I only slept for a little less than an hour.
When I walked by a room at one point, someone noticed my lanyard that I had forgotten to take off. He said, “Can you please ask Lisa to fix the noise problem? Some of the people living in our room are playing music and yelling all the time. We try to study, but it’s impossible.” A group of four people — some of them with books in their hand — were nodding in agreement.
Unfortunately I think this is a reality of such close living quarters. It presents a challenge to creating a work environment since sleep is important for doing good work and reducing stress (which leads to irrational behavior and short term decision-making and might cause someone to quit working, for example).
You are the 5 people you surround yourself by most
The above section title is a quote I live by. It’s the idea that you become a product of the people you spend the most time with. I have the luxury of controlling who I surround myself by, and as a result choose intelligent, ambitious, kind people. But refugees in camps have no such control. As a result I think that people like Shafique suffer.
In the absence of a group of supportive friends with similar interests it is difficult to grow as a person. If Shafique had a group of friends that encouraged him to read more books and asked him what he was currently learning I think he’d spend less time drinking and watching movies and more time investing in his future. But instead he lives in an environment where it’s not only hard to find the personal space to read, but also probably not encouraged by some of the less educated people in the camp (guys he calls “the thugs”). This also leads to isolation and loneliness, which Shafique struggles with more than most since he has no family. That leads to depression, which then leads to a further lack of motivation.
John has a similar story. A couple times he told me how difficult it is for him to find the quiet space to plan his English lessons. Both he and Shafique have computers to work, but if they work in their room they don’t have privacy and if they work in the community garden they are surrounded by people drinking and smoking.
A tragic example of the “surroundings define you” argument is the high percentage of people that are physically harming themselves by cutting their wrists. It’s impossible to not notice this problem since many of the men’s arms are cut to pieces. But where does someone get the idea of cutting themselves? From other people cutting themselves. The same is true of drinking, smoking, paying prostitutes in Athens for sex, selling themselves for sex — all of which I saw.
This social pressure makes personal development difficult. They make after-hours time investments like reading, studying, and preparing for the next day less likely. But once again, I think this could be solved if the camp was converted into a vocational center because the “bad apples” wouldn’t have the right to stay. Like a university they could be expelled if they got in fights or stabbed someone. The result would be a safer and more productive environment to work in. However, the problem is difficult to solve immediately since the camp can’t turn away the troublemakers.
Getting a job requires risk and leaving the community
One day after spending a lot of time with Samim I asked him why he wasn’t working (for what had to be the 10th time). And he told me two reasons that I hadn’t heard yet before. The first was a practical reason, and the second was more emotional:
He told me that as soon as he starts working he loses his cash card and ability to live at the camp. That means that if his job doesn’t have a contract he risks working for one month and then getting fired and having nowhere to sleep. One of his friends worked for one month in the fields nearby and then got paid $70 for the entire month’s work even though he’d been promised many times that. Even if this is irrational — after all, there are many NGOs that wouldn’t do this and would guarantee housing for a period of time — it creates a perceived risk. Given the emotional state of most refugees they don’t have much risk tolerance.
The second reason he hadn’t left the camp was because he saw himself as the father of a group of unaccompanied minors he lives with. He argued that without them they wouldn’t have someone to teach them how to cook and tell them to shower. When I stayed with him that night I noticed that everyone calls him Teacher and he jokingly refers to himself as Dad.
Both of these problems are difficult to solve. However, I felt like I made a lot of progress with Samim acting as a support resource. I encouraged him to get a job and explained that he’d have much more money if he worked. I explained that an NGO wouldn’t fire him immediately. Simply reasoning with him and repeating what he told me helped expose the irrational reasons he was staying at the camp.
Low-skill jobs are highly competitive and pay very little
One of the things I spent a lot of time thinking about in Greece was the long term potential of this idea. I believe the best possible solution is the one that can scale to the most refugees. I also believe that in order to be sustainable refugees need to rely on aid and “sympathy dollars” as little as possible. In economic-speak, that means that they need to be “competitive in the global economy.”
Unfortunately many of the jobs that can be quickly trained are the most competitive. For example, after training a few people on data entry and web research we began looking for jobs on Upwork. Many of them paid $2/hour — well below Greece’s 4 euro/hour minimum wage. They had 50+ proposals meaning that a refugee would need to spend hours to find a job that might only pay $10.
This is a reality of outsourcing and efficient labor markets. When the “product” — in this case low skill labor — is simple and requires very little cultural understanding it becomes a commodity. The price of that commodity — in this case the wage — is pushed down until quality suffers. With hundreds of millions of college-educated Indians working for highly specialized agencies this creates a dark picture for labor in the West. The market for low-skill outsourced labor is simply too competitive and the difference in living expenses in the West vs. India are too high.
Typically the role of skills development and education is funded by governments or student debt. Learning high-wage skills takes years in some cases and tens of thousands of dollars. But in places like Greece refugees have very little access to subsidized education or even loans if they were to pay for it themselves.
All of this leads me to think that the coding school model might be a good one for refugees. There is currently a huge gap in demand for programming skills and the supply of people able to do the work. This means that a programmer can make a high wage, and in some cases it doesn’t take very long to learn the skills required (of course there is a skill/wage scale). Rather than teach low skill tasks that would theoretically have quick returns, I think that investing in high skill jobs like programming is a better option. Many of the refugees that I spoke to wanted to become web developers which is important because it means the motivation is there.
Payments and banking are difficult, but not impossible
One of the biggest logistical questions was how to pay refugees and where they’d safely keep that money. International money transfer is notoriously expensive, and that’s for people with access to banking. Many of the refugees I worked with had already applied for asylum, but some had not, which meant they couldn’t legally work or open a bank account. Even those that could open a bank account had a tricky chicken and the egg problem. In order to open a bank account in Greece refugees need an employment contract. But in order to get jobs on platforms like Upwork they need a bank account.
For the purposes of the pilot I stepped in as a middleman and paid people in cash. But even this was dangerous since single men live in rooms with as many as 14 people. The week before I arrived one of the refugees with mental illness problems had stabbed one of Shafique’s friends. When I offered to pay him after doing his first task he initially declined. I told him he had worked for it and needed to accept payment. Then he told me that he felt unsafe and asked that I not tell anyone that I’d paid him.
Fortunately at the end of the month I found a coworking space that agreed to offer employment contracts, pay refugees, and even help them use bitcoin as a banking solution. The owner of the coworking space told me that he has helped a lot of NGOs hire refugees. That prevents them from needing a legal entity in Greece.
With this partnership I feel confident that, at least in the short term, payments and banking won’t be a problem.
Recruiting women was nearly impossible
One of the things that disappointed me most was how difficult it was to recruit women. Oinofyta is an Afghan camp, and that means that many of the women have never been to school or worked in their life. Now that they aren’t suppressed by groups like the Taliban, many of them are learning English and going to school. But when I arrived there were only two women (in a camp of 500) that spoke broken English. Neither of them had ever used a computer in their life and therefore weren’t good candidates for the program.
Many Muslim cultures have different views on women’s rights and equality. This is frustrating coming from a Western society and is going to be one of the biggest challenges of cultural integration. Still, I think that it will be essential to involve women in the program.
During my last days in Greece I spent time in Athens meeting with a couple refugee women’s groups to discuss ways to get women involved. Melissa Network and Jafra Greece are both interested in teaching women the skills required to join the program. I think that partnering with organizations like this will be an important step.
Conclusion
If I’m honest, I think that I came into this project naive. Since I’ve returned to the United States and talked with friends about the work, I’ve realized that this is a result of being so insulated. When I describe the problems people jump to the same simple solutions that I did before spending time with refugees and understanding their living situation. I thought employing people would be as simple as introducing them to outsourcing platforms like Upwork, teaching them skills, and then supporting them in things like setting up a bank account. But I think this is a classic example of applying Western thinking to the developing world (which an Afghan refugee camp in Greece certainly is).
Many of the problems that need to be solved are infrastructural. Refugees need access to banking, loans, better housing, safety, equal treatment in legal systems, and so many things that we take for granted in wealthy countries. It’s for this reason that so many refugees in Greece risk their lives on dangerous smuggler routes to get to a country like Germany. However, these pieces of infrastructure won’t be developed anytime soon. And so scaling will be a matter of working around a broken system and filling as many of the gaps as possible. This will require creativity (like using Bitcoin as a banking solution, or platforms like Squarespace to speed the web development training process).
Scaling will also require an understanding of refugees’ environment and difficult living situation. On many occasions I found myself thinking, “What a stupid reason not to work” whilst talking to someone or becoming angry when someone was an hour late. But as I spent more time in the camp I became more empathetic to the underlying causes. It’s not that any one thing makes someone frequently tardy or unable to work. It’s that there are so many small things that stack up against a refugee who is already suffering from emotional trauma and depression.
None of these challenges make a remote employment program impossible. The sewing shop at Oinofyta is evidence that working is possible and transformative for the refugees’ lives. My findings are a testament to Niaomh’s ability to adapt to the circumstances and employ over a dozen refugees in the camp.
However, I believe that creating an office-like environment in Athens is the most efficient way to help the most refugees possible. My hypothesis is that there are hundreds, if not thousands, of Shafiques in camps near Athens — that is, smart people currently living in terrible conditions, and suffering as a result. So my goal going forward will be to set up an environment where they can come each day to work and learn. Such a place would get them out of the camp for 8 hours a day. It would also be a place where learning and working is encouraged, a place where ambitious, smart people could support each other. Unfortunately this means that I will spend my time on this instead of the remote work program at Oinofyta. Making that decision has been one of the hardest things I’ve had to do in my life, because it means leaving behind a community I’ve come to love over the last month. But my hope is that by sharing what I learned someone can continue trying to make remote work at the camp a reality, while I pursue a new pilot in Athens.
I’m still trying to plan the exact next steps. But my current thinking is that I’ll try three experiments over the next couple months:
Code school in Athens
I want to set up a code school that could teach 25 refugees to program. One of the organizations that I met with has already run a small pilot with three Eritrean refugees and all three got jobs as developers. They are looking for funding, and so I plan to invest some of my personal money from the SimpleData acquisition, and find others who want to pitch in to make this a reality. My time in Greece made me confident that there are 25 refugees who could make it through the program, and that it would be an efficient way to get them out of the camps and earning high incomes.
If you’re interested in helping with this project email me at mthomas.denver@gmail.com
Creating demand for non-sympathy dollars
As I mentioned, I believe that in order for this to be sustainable in the long run, refugees can’t be dependent on aid or sympathy dollars. Both have limits (see, The Stubborn 2% Giving Rate). I also learned that low-skill jobs on marketplaces like Upwork aren’t a viable solution. However, I think its possible to create demand for low-skill labor by selling a service that depends on it.
A social enterprise company could sell a competitive product or service and use refugees as the labor. For example, rather than compete for data entry tasks on Upwork the company could sell a service that requires lots of data entry on the backend.
Match refugees with companies that want to hire
My original plan was to match refugees with altruistic companies. For example, now that Faridoon knows how to build a website on Squarespace I could help him find NGOs that need multi-language websites built (like the one he built for Oinofyta). Or now that Shafique knows how to build lead lists I could connect him to companies in my professional network.
My gut tells me that this option won’t scale, but it seems like the quickest way to get my friends, like Faridoon and Shafique, out of the camp. From afar its easy to think about scale and prioritize options that help 1,000 people. But when you sit down and break bread with someone you realize how important helping one person is. For me, this project has become personal. It’s not about helping some ambiguous “other.” It’s about helping my friends.
