Hack the Refugee Crisis, Athens: Solomon
with Effect. 6th Feb, 2017.
TL;DR Today we met the team behind Solomon, a non-profit platform for resettled immigrants to create and share journalistic and creative content (see this great video on stereotypes from them). We met Fanis Kollias and his team, who explained their goals and journey so far. They also shared some broad barriers that are preventing them from realising their full potential. We had a lengthy brainstorming session to pinpoint and prioritise specific issues that we could help overcome in the hackathon over the weekend. Some of these are: (1) creating short projects with clear outcomes to systematically achieve the long term goal, and (2) helping build a robust media outlet using boosted Facebook pages and Youtube channels.
Kick off
I reached Greece on a lonely Sunday night, torn between excitement and trepidation. I had put in a lot of energy into spreading word about this event and raising money for it, and even ran 100 km in a month to show my commitment towards the cause. It was great to finally be here. At the same time, I felt a great burden of responsibility to my 80+ donors and I wanted to be able to give them a very productive and impactful trip report at the end of this expedition. Most of all, I was curious to meet the other volunteers travelling from all over the world — as far as Australia — and learn about their goals and expectations.
After a quick breakfast and introduction on Monday, we took the Metro to Monastiraki and reached Impact HUB, which rents out office spaces to non-profits to conduct their business from. We had a comic-book-library-turned-meeting-room to ourselves for the day. The agenda for the day was to (1) meet a team of people who ran a non-profit with a cause pertaining to refugees, (2) understand their work and pinpoint some of the major challenges they faced. We would then try to overcome these as part of the hackathon over the weekend.
We started off by introducing ourselves and sharing why we were there. I was immediately inspired by some of the impassioned words from Shoshanna and Emily. This was followed by a formal presentation on Effect. Effect operates 2 schools in India and 1 in Nepal, with 4 more in the pipeline. The schools are open to all and have mostly female teachers (a common phenomenon in India). Teachers are provided with a phone and they have an app to track student progress. Teacher salaries are part of Effect’s operating costs.
Note: Sandy used to work with Villgro before Effect, an incubator in India for social enterprises.
Solomon: A journey we share
After a coffee break, we met Fanis Kollias, the founder of Solomon. Fanis started off working with Green Peace but couldn’t find enough freedom to innovate. He realised that he might have more impact working on his own.
Fanis has an interesting mission with Solomon: Social integration through media. Fanis had an idea for creating a magazine for refugees by the refugees, but realised this would only marginalise these communities more. At the same time he was tired of the increasing negative press around refugees (showing violent reactions from refugees, or unhygienic conditions where the refugee live). So he created a platform for refugees to create and post content about various topics, ranging from culture and cuisine to various social issues.
Solomon aims at addressing longer term needs of refugees rather than immediate ones. Most volunteers involved with Solomon are resettled immigrants who are looking for opportunities to express themselves. One Solomon volunteer and content writer is Nasruddin, a refugee from Afghanistan who escaped in 2007, and waited 7 years to be granted asylum in Greece. He works as an interpreter for Greek agencies, helping translate asylum applications in Urdu, Persian, Pashto and Dari to Greek and English. For someone having seen so much struggle in life, he was a very cheerful and chatty person!
Solomon’s website is well made and the articles are fascinating. As they matured, they have branched from written articles to other form of media, especially videos. A particular short video created by Fanis, Anna and their team addresses regional stereotypes with a touch of humour. It also portrays Solomon’s strength as a team of people from diverse backgrounds who can create a direct social impact with these videos.
Another new Solomon initiative is the Inclumedia lab, which matches a Solomon content creator to a journalism student who then becomes their coach and partner for a period of 3 months. This is a great learning opportunity for resettled people who are looking for ways to hone their journalistic skills for a livelihood.
I was instantly awed by Fanis’s selfless goal and his passionate pursuit. Since childhood, I have been hardwired to equate happiness and success to making money or gaining power, and my subsequent experience in corporates has only reinforced that belief. I was delighted to meet this person who was driven to work on a project that would bring him no money or fame, but might bring happiness and purpose to lives of other less fortunate people.
Note: As with all great founders, Fanis has a great story of how he came up with the name “Solomon”, which goes like this. He was brainstorming for a name with a friend, and she took out the book she was reading. It was The Elephant’s Journey by José Saramago, a story about the experiences of an elephant called Solomon who travels on foot to various countries and encounters different reactions based on the regional culture. Fanis could relate Solomon the Elephant’s journey to that of refugees who travel to other countries on foot, and so named his organisation “Solomon”, with the silhouette of a walking elephant as the logo.
Challenges
The goal of the day was to identify barriers that we could then address later in the hackathon over the weekend. We had a lengthy brainstorming session and asked Fanis some brutal questions, which he answered honestly and bravely. I was filled with admiration for him for standing up to the group of ruthless techies, analysing his ideas and absorbing all useful feedback. I was also greatly impressed with the practical perspective Emily brought to the conversation and some insightful suggestions she made. It was as much a learning experience for me as for Fanis and Solomon.
Solomon faces a number of challenges keeping it from actualising its full potential. Firstly, as with many organisations at this stage, Solomon is severely understaffed. Fanis is passionate but visibly on the fast track to a burn out. It doesn’t help that they have no money and nominal revenue. Furthermore, they are still working on scaling the volume of their content sustainably, and lack robust media outlets, e.g. they are yet to exploit the features available on Youtube channels. Lastly, Solomon could benefit from clearer short term goals to achieve their long term goal systematically.
I took an instant liking to Fanis since I could relate to his approach of having a great idea and running with it without much consideration to the administrative effort involved. Even as I heard him speak, my mind was exploding with a hundred ideas to make Solomon profitable, but he made me realise that it takes time to test ideas and sadly, most of them fail. Setting short term goals, aiming for low hanging fruits, and making realistic timelines has been something I have struggled with, and I could see the same indestructible optimist in Fanis.
Note: Fanis is against ads. He is against donations for fear of becoming complacent and digressing from the original goal of creating an impact. He wants to build a self-sustaining business model out of his unique idea.
Conclusion
All in all, it was a great day. We got to talk to a team of passionate volunteers who have an altruistic goal and are striving to realise it. We helped each other understand their most important challenges and their underlying causes. We also discussed some possible solutions that would help Solomon grow as an organisation, e.g. assembling an experienced board of advisors who would pledge an amount to support the organisation and also help guide the decisions.
Note: We had some lighter moments in the day. We had lunch in a cozy tavern called The Tavern. Lunch was followed by a quick trip to a local jewellery store where I and Noor received a professional tutorial on multi-purpose earrings from Sandy. We also had a sumptuous Greek meal for dinner, complete with salad, pita bread, meat and local wine that came in weird-looking bottles.
Action items
- Learn more about the phone app that the teachers use in the Effect schools.
- Learn about the refugee registration process, asylum and country matching process and timelines.
- Learn about number of refugee camps in Europe, their strength, administration process, etc.
Thanks to Shoshanna Howard for reviewing!