VIP.fund: Displaced Youth2Future Leaders

Rama Chakaki, co-founder of the VIP.fund, is an advocate of Arab youth, connecting them online with mentors, elearning, employment and entrepreneurship programs. She is a founding member of Arab Women in Computing, the first regional Women Angel investment Network (WAIN), and has served on the board of multiple companies including TechWadi, PCRF, PACES, and The Impact HUB – UAE. Rama applies 30 years of technical and communications experience to her passion: investing in social enterprises, using technology for social development, and nurturing future social entrepreneurs. She created Baraka Ventures in 2005 to invest in social and tech businesses, and she established BarakaBits, the first online media venture in the Middle East delivering exclusively good news, changing the narrative to an intelligent, optimistic and empowering one. The VIP.fund operates out of Los Angeles and partners with organizations in the United States, Palestine, Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey, and Syria.

The VIP.fund is a youth-focused philanthropy fund. Our mission is to empower young men and women impacted by conflict through education and employment. We run e-learning programs, crowdfund for college, and partner with institutions who further our beneficiaries' employment prospects. 

edSeed delivers education programs to students including those in Za’atari, the largest refugee camp worldwide, with existing university and institutional partnerships in the region and a wide network of outreach partners to leverage support such as Jusoor and SIBA. Other partners include AJ+, MBC Arabia, Raseef22, PeaceNews, BarakaBits, LaunchGood, BuildPalestine, and ANERA.

Syria Digital Lab explores the potential of the digital space, creating an effective ecosystem that identifies, incubates, and accelerates Syrian-led initiatives. SDL connects talented tech developers and entrepreneurs from the diaspora to donors, civil society organizations, and the private sector in a collaborative effort, solving some of Syria’s most pressing challenges.

Our additional projects are described below.

With 3 million displaced Syrians under age 30, lack of education and employment constitutes a critical problem. Syria suffers from a massive drain of human capital; displaced scholars have no opportunity to develop the skills they will need to rebuild their country. In places of refuge, excluded from growth opportunities, this crisis of exclusion poses a serious risk for Syria and the world, potentially contributing to further conflict. The United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) reports just 1 percent of displaced students in universities, compared to 34 percent of similar youth globally. To solve the skill and inclusion deficit, we’ve made a difference in the following number of displaced youth since 2015: 

• Youth participants across programs: 2081 

• 80 edSeed students crowdfunded 

• 85 entrepreneurs & mentors on SDL’s virtual incubator

• 38 Peer-to-Peer mentors

• 271 engaged via media/publishing e-learning program VoxVisio

• 6 STEAM e-learning Train-the-Trainer participants 

• 1200 STEAM participants in Lebanon

• 13 fellows building e-learning, publishing, and crowdfunding platforms

• Outside donor base: 15,000

Our approach offers sustained, longitudinal engagements with specific cohorts of young people across the spectrum of displaced youth. We are connected to an untapped market, we are adaptable, we are relevant, we are ready to scale up.

Feeding on the energy, talent, and drive of a booming younger generation for whom displacement is a reality but also an opportunity for organizations like ours, we launched our mission with the greatest hopes under circumstances that were less than ideal, but at least were somewhat feasible. Now, because of the pandemic, we know our work has only just begun and we may have to rewrite the rules of educational intervention in order to help students whose countries may not be in a position to help their own. The VIP.fund offers diverse projects to restore the stolen dreams of the displaced and disenfranchised, including:

edSeed:

• Delivering education programs that leapfrog outdated models

 Syria Digital Lab:

• Providing employment opportunities by using technology to scale connections with established entrepreneurs

 Peer-2-Peer Mentorship: 

• Supporting scholars by connecting them with peer mentors across the world via virtual webinars 

 Train-the-Trainer: 

• Introducing critical thinking programs by mobilizing refugee youth to run eLearning/STREAM programs in Arabic, teaching them how to train children online using the MIT SCRATCH programming language

 The Artisan Fund:

• Building social and economic connections with a global community by seeding education and apprenticeship campaigns for artisans to support sustainability

Youth across the economic spectrum worldwide are at risk of alienation and disconnection. Displaced youth are at particular risk because of limited access to education, jobs, technology, and stable social environments.

We’ve all seen the tragic effect war has had on youth in the Middle East: young men recruited by corrupt organizations and trained for a lifetime of violence, who would opt for an opportunity to receive an education and secure income if it were available. Young women are equally deprived of the chance to thrive and be independent. At this moment in history, safe return to conflict zones are not options.

The VIP.fund has created an ecosystem of refugee populations, education, and technology. Displaced youth are the gateway to peace in their communities; opportunity is all they need to prosper. Our beneficiaries are agents of circularity. We seed their dreams and complete the cycle of generosity as they give back to their families, their nations, and the global community. It’s a huge gap for philanthropy to fill, but the agency and social remittances these future leaders represent are a net benefit to the region in an increasingly globalized world and will shape their communities for years to come.

As conflict threatens to tear society apart, the VIP.fund brings displaced youth together.

We are committed to focusing on how displacement and the pandemic will affect the developing world and specifically the students we are supporting by providing:

• Personalized mentorship, education, and career counseling

• Lobbying on behalf of youth refugees with educational institutions and global policy makers  

• Digital platforms and virtual networks to support pathways for students, entrepreneurs, and artisans 

There will always be great need, but we are well-positioned to elevate our beneficiaries and incentivize our donors as we create a virtual homeland of hope.

Running an impact tech incubator in Dubai from 2005 to 2013 exposed me to data showing a rising concern about the Middle East youth bulge; absence of employment opportunities; and increasing youth fragmentation and marginalization throughout the region due to conflict, borders, and low economic opportunities.  As an IT professional, I saw an opportunity in connecting Middle Eastern youth online in a virtual learning and co-creation community transcending borders. As an entrepreneur, I saw an opportunity in running online incubators for their ideas and offering those who were marginalized as equal an opportunity as those privileged by living in cities or in thriving economic ecosystems. As an Arab-American, I was familiar with the community that existed in the West, a community who would volunteer to connect, support, and collaborate with their counterparts in the Middle East.

In my senior year of computer engineering, I chose to build a sign-language learning program. For 30 years, I’ve explored using technology for social good. Being in that space, I’ve worked with many worthy social causes and beneficiaries across the spectrum. Youth have been my favorite group to work with. I see the promise in them. They hold the key to social regeneration in areas of conflict. Their optimism, enthusiasm, willingness to learn, experiment, fail, repeat and embrace technology is key to virtual community building. They know how to leverage technology to enable themselves and co-create innovation at the same time. I’ve also envisioned a system where irrespective of a person’s academic capabilities, he or she can thrive, and these are some of the key pillars of the VIP.fund: technology, creativity, entrepreneurship, optimism, curiosity, and the willingness to experiment and have fun.

In my twenties, I contracted a debilitating illness that affected my heart and other vital organs. The two years I spent fighting for my life, and the adverse impact this illness had on my emotional, professional, and family relationships for the next decade raised my awareness of others who endure hardship early in life. This experience helps me connect with our youth beneficiaries and gives me the drive to keep supporting them irrespective of the challenges we face in doing so. My combined skills in technology; media; community mobilization; experience that straddles industries (IT, education, media, consulting, humanitarian relief, and venture capital) coupled with a global network of influencers built over 30 years are two factors that make me well positioned for success. I’ve adopted an independent, systematic and slow approach to sustainable project development. Unlike many nonprofits working in the Middle East, ours relies on many small donations, with technologies we have created and built along with our beneficiaries. We measure our growth and success carefully and take measured, calculated risks.

In 2002, I led a project to migrate 350 financial institutions across the Middle East onto a new SWIFT’s IP Network. SWIFT is the means for banks to transfer funds. The banks in the Middle East would have faced fines if they didn’t migrate by a certain date, the majority lacked the technology resources to understand the move, and their chief reluctance was the extraordinary costs involved in the new system they were forced to adopt. The fees for fixed lines imposed by two global telecoms controlling the gateways to the IP network were exorbitant, even by the banking industry standards. Having been on a team at a U.S.-based telecom to build a global IP network, I knew of an alternative.  With a colleague, we drew up an IP-VPN solution, presented it to SWIFT, lobbied for it—as it was new for them at the time—and implemented it for banks, saving them millions of dollars in telecom fees, and enabling countries like Yemen, Libya, Pakistan and the rest of the region to migrate within a 1-year period. Working against the interests of global telecoms, while convincing central banks and SWIFT to accept our solution, was a major undertaking.

In 2009, I volunteered with the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund (PCRF), a U.S. charity supporting conflict-impacted children. To mobilize communities in the UAE to support PCRF, I had conversations with youth who responded, “We are tired of the misery of the Palestinians. We feel helpless and can’t watch another suffering child.”  Like other causes there, PCRF focused on the problem, not the solution. Their message was defeatist in tone, so I introduced a strategy focusing on a positive outcome and invited others to join. We worked on an emotional rehabilitation program, taking photos of the journeys. A young double amputee from Gaza joined a scuba program and became the first double amputee certified PADI Arab diver. The media loved it. Soon, our documentary about him aired on Arabia TV, reaching millions: a transformative moment for the PCRF. I established an advisory firm to serve other charities and was asked to lead communications for four regional government youth projects. I then launched Barakabits.com and delivered thousands of positive stories from the Middle East. In 2013, we were the ONLY platform in the region delivering short, web content similar to Buzzfeed and Huffington Post. We were copied by AJ+ and others.