NaTakallam ("We Speak" in Arabic)

Born and raised in New York to Lebanese parents, who left their country due to civil war, Sara completed her French baccalaureate at the French school in NY and graduated in psychology from Tufts University in 2006. After a year with NY-based conflict resolution organization Seeds of Peace, she moved to Beirut, where she pursued further studies and work in human rights before transitioning to journalism, covering the Arab Uprisings. In 2012, Sara completed her Master’s in International Affairs at Columbia University, thereafter founding NaTakallam, a social enterprise that hires refugees as online tutors, teachers and translators. Sara has overseen the growth of NaTakallam from a small startup to a globally recognized social enterprise that has provided $800,000+ in self-earned income to refugees, delivering services to 9000+ individuals and organizations worldwide, including Ivy League schools, corporations, UN agencies and major NGOs like the IRC, Save the Children and more.

Only 1% of 79.5 million refugees worldwide get formally resettled to countries in Europe or North America, given a work permit and chance to restart their lives. Even when resettled to such countries, they face linguistic and cultural barriers to employment.

NaTakallam leverages technology to solve the challenge of millions of highly educated displaced persons with no income access, hiring them as online tutors, teachers, cultural exchange partners and translators, providing customers with high-quality language services that are often a lifeline to those delivering them. 

Our market-based solution elevates humanity by providing:

1. Income to refugees, often cutoff from local labor markets

2. Purpose, dignity, human connection to refugees who’ve been robbed from a future and lost their social network due to war

3. Hope, building bridges and giving refugees a voice, beyond media/political spheres

To date, NaTakallam has disbursed $800,000+ income to 200+ refugees and displaced persons worldwide.

The topic of refugees exploded in 2015, when the photo of 2-year-old Aylan Kurdi’s dead body on the Turkish shores went viral. Since, global displacement (nearly 80 million people) continues to rise. Covid19 has exacerbated the situation, and with climate change, another 150 million people will become refugees by 2050 (World Bank). Millions today have crossed borders yet remain stuck in limbo--in camps, border detention, host countries that don’t give them legal residency, barring them from the local economy with little hope on the horizon. Even when formally resettled, refugees face linguistic or cultural barriers to entering a new labor market, in addition to social isolation and stigmatization. But sadly, poplusism runs high, and the response from influential global actors dwindles at best, neglecting the needs of those fleeing conflict. 

NaTakallam tackles the primary necessity of displaced communities to access an income by leveraging the digital economy and refugees’ language skills, hiring them as online tutors, cultural exchange partners and translators, giving them income, a restored sense of dignity and purpose as well as soft skills. Our work inherently gives conflict-affected individuals a voice that in turn, helps change the narrative around migrants all while showcasing their quality work.

NaTakallam operates virtually, leveraging the era of the "connected refugee" to provide income opportunities to displaced persons, regardless of their location and status, through a commission-based model split between NaTakallam and the refugees delivering the services.

Refugees apply to our organization, and if accepted, earn income by provdiging one of three online services: language classes, translation/interpretation services and cultural exchange programs in schools, universities and companies worldwide. 

While many find and apply to NaTakallam on their own, our robust network of NGO partners and agencies on the ground helps us with recruitment and, based on the country, serve as payment partners to transfer cash payments to refugees. We also use various fintech/online payment solutions to send refugees' monthly income.

After being interviewed and vetted, onboarded tutors and translators are trained by NaTakallam's staff, senior refugee tutors and education consultants based on the programs they will join.

We are not a marketplace and curate programs based on both sides of the market. We match students based on the learners needs, interests, schedules, leveraging technology to systematize the matchmaking/ensure compatability. For school, university and company programs, we offer various themes and options. All of our programs are curated to fit various interests.

As a double-sided market, NaTakallam serves: 

(1) Refugees/displaced persons, providing them with income for delivering online language services. They also gain soft skills, our staff’s support and training, and a rekindled social network from the many students and clients they work with. 

Beyond income, refugees feel a restored sense of dignity and purpose, lifted out of isolation, especially during times of confinement. 

(2) Paying clients who seek high quality language learning, cultural exchange and translation services; including
              (a) individual users who get impactful language practice while directly contributing to their tutor's livelihood
              (b) academics and their students with NaTakallam being a unique addition to their classroom, fostering empathy and building bridges, unlike any other classroom experience
              (c) organizational clients-- NGOs and Corporates who use NaTakallam for language services with impact

With a multicultural team who has grown up learning languages and working in international organizations, we have a solid understanding of the needs of our paying users. As founders from war-torn countries, with economic and political development expertise, we are particularly well-versed to understand refugee needs, the global humanatarian context, and have created upwards mobility for our refugee workers who join our core staff as advisors with lived experience.

Through NaTakallam, refugees and displaced people, traditionally left behind or marginalized, often seen as a burden and passive recipients of aid, become online tutors and translators, regaining access to income, regardless of location and status, instilling in them a restored sense of dignity and purpose.

On the other end, beyond refugee income, our work dramatically changes people's attitudes towards migrants, creating opportunities for individuals who might never meet a refugee to learn their language, culture, and hear their story, thus building bridges, impacting people's beliefs and attitudes around a topic so often misrepresented in the media and political spheres.  

I founded NaTakallam in 2015, in the midst of the Syrian war, as a first-generation American, born to Lebanese immigrants, in response to two simultaneously occurring events: the height of the Syrian refugee crisis, highly visible in the media and close to home, as my family left the war in Lebanon in the 80s; and the realization that there were no viable options for me, to practice and learn colloquial Arabic on a budget in New York. With a background in psychology, human rights and conflict resolution, I was highly aware of the danger of leaving so many displaced people in a volatile context, with no hope/future ahead, as is the case for millions of refugees today, who mostly live in dire situations in developing countries.

Seeing how these two problems could combine to create a positive impact, connecting livelihood generation with meaningful language learning and cultural exchange, I founded NaTakallam, originally, as an Arabic language platform for displaced Syrians in Lebanon to teach language learners worldwide. My co-founder, Reza Rahnema shares a similar background with parents who left Iran for France after the Iranian Revolution and a Masters in InternationalSecurity and Economic Development from Sciences Po/ Columbia University.

I grew up in NY because of the civil war taking place in my homeland, Lebanon. The war started in the 1970s and lasted until 1990, varying in its intensity. Every morning, my father would drive me and my brothers to school and share his stories of survival, working with the Red Cross, where he'd tend to the medical needs of his countrymen, children, women and“enemies” alike. The dichotomy of watching my cousins living in violence, growing up in war and uncertainty, and me living in the US struck me. 

Today, millions of refugees are fleeing violence and should have the luck that my family and I had when we were accepted as immigrants to the US in the early 80s. I am passionate about the work I do, because it is not only supporting   people   who’ve   lost   everything   and   are   being   met   with discrimination and rejection by the rest of the world, but it also contributes to building bridges and connecting people from different cultures. While providing livelihoods to refugees is important, ending the root cause of displacement, related to war, is critical too. By creating dialogue and changing the narrative around refugees, NaTakallam operates on multiple levels.

As a Lebanese, born and raised in New York, where I studied at a French school, I’ve always been immersed in multilingualism and multiculturalism, passionate about travel and diversity. I connect with individuals from across the world, having lived in the US, Latin America, Sub-Saharan Africa, Europe and the MiddleEast.

Growing up between Beirut and NY, traveling even during the war’s brief moments of respite, I’ve seen conflict’s destruction on a country and its people, up close and personally, with my Lebanese family and through my work as a journalist, during the Arab Uprisings. I worked in conflict resolution and human rights with organizations like Human Rights Watch and the UN, gaining a solid understanding of the international humanitarian space from within, complementing my experience with academic studies, during my masters’ in International Affairs, a practical degree that helped understand inner workings of major international organizations, from managing budgets to dealing with political risk.

From a leadership perspective, over the years, I led the Arab Associations and Arab-Israeli dialogue groups on campus, students theater groups and council organizations, guiding teams and enrolling them in these activities. Today, I oversee a team of 100+ refugee tutors and translators in 25 different countries and staff across five continents.

Since co-founding NaTakallam, I’ve had the honor of speaking at UN and World Bank gatherings on social entrepreneurship and technology in the refugee space, seeing my role not only as an enterprise leader, but a true advocate for peace, justice and the refugee cause.

In 2014, I graduated from my masters with no job ligned up. I spent a year of unsuccesful job hunting, living off of journalism side gigs, including work on NaTakallam-back then, only an idea.

Months later, I decided to apply the concept to Columbia’s startup competition. I made the second round, but it stopped there. 

In July, after reaching the semifinals in a World Bank competition, NaTakallam launched a pilot study with 10 refugee tutors in Beirut and 20 language learners-- a necessary step to be considered for the winning prize.

But we lost. This came after a year of joblessess, and I felt quite hopeless. In that moment, I chose to flip things around: rather than losing a World Bank competition, I decided to focus on being a semi-finalist as an incredible win-- the top 10 among 200 startups. I chose to continue working on and sharing about NaTakallam on social media, and in a week, out of nowhere, it went viral.

Since that moment, NaTakallam has helped refugees earn $800,000+. In fact, I reapplied to that same competition 2 years later, and won the prize, adequately showing that mindset is everything, and one should never give up.

NaTakallam’s team is mostly from the non-profit space. 

As humanitarians, running an enterprise, we are constantly learning how to proudly enroll others in our work that generates real impact by selling refugee-powered language services. 

Every experience and program helps build my confidence as a spokesperson and salesperson, and I strive to pass it on to my team. 

Recently, our Translation Department had an issue with a client, a company that wasn’t compensating our work fairly and being dismissive of our protocols, processes and pricing. I stepped in, called the client with the department head by my side, explained I could not sit idly while this client spoke unfairly to my colleague. I then handed my colleague the phone to encourage her to find a fair path forward for all, which she successfully did. The client was in fact, in the end, understanding, and my colleauge later shared it was a learning experience as she watched me lead the call but also encourage her to do the final "negotiation."  This was leadership that my colleague said helped her learn, not by “words” but also by action, which she said was fundamental to helping her grow in her role and that skill.

NaTakallam is a firm believer in the power of collaboration. Having won smaller prizes, through MIT's Innovate for Refugees and Inclusive Innovation Challenges, we are aware of MIT's incredible network.
We are keen on not reinventing the wheel but leveraging various stakeholders to generate deep sustainable impact with organizations within MITs network, especially INGOs and UN agencies.
We would also look forward to hopefully getting invaluable technical assistance, currently critical to NaTakallam, who as a social enterprises, is at a clear tipping point that requires significant and strategic investment in technology to take things to the next level. 

Input

1. Create the interface of NaTakallam; provide gig economy employment opportunities

2. Provide the opportunity of belonging community through training and mentorship

3. Establish partnerships with academic institutions, NGOs, and corporations

Output (focused on payment to customer)

1. Translation and tutoring service that is offered to external clients

2. Refugees make friendships, earn income, and gain social capital

3. Clients learn languages in an engaging format at an affordable price

Outcome

1. Refugees are able to survive, thrive, integrate, make connections, and restore self-dignity

2. Paying clients get a much-needed service with high-quality at a low cost while ensuring social impact

Impact

1. Narrative about refugees and integration shift and become positive

2. Refugees are able to restart their lives

3. Users gain unique insight into the refugee crisis and feel they can make a direct impact on refugee livelihoods

Assumptions 1

1. The demand is large enough to accommodate

2. Refugees have the baseline skills and abilities to perform well

Assumptions 2

1. Political system and civil society in the specific host countries are open to integration

2. Absence of extremely xenophobic policies

Assumptions 3

1. Large number of students / users.

2. Openness to change

3. Absence of negative communication and discourse

Since 2015, almost 190 displaced persons have self-generated $800,000 through 30,000+ hours of NaTakallam conversation sessions with 8,000+ users in 90+ countries.

We have currently served 8,000 users who learn a language and get to learn about another culture and 800 refugees and thus 8,800 in total

In 1 year: 15,000 users an 1,000 refugees - 16,000 in total

In 5 years: 187,500 users and 12,500 refugees- 200,000 in total 

The beauty of our work lies in its ripple effect and the more we can bring NaTakallam to individuals, schools, organizations, the better we can change the narrative, support displaced persons with income and bring deep and sustainable change. 

When a refugee tutor regularly meets with their student for language sessions, the student gets to see and understand the challenges of their refugee tutor from a whole new angle—our goal is to keep bringing our language offers to users and schools worldwide, also expanding on our language offerings (Turkish, Portuguese, Mandarin…) and the user experience from a tech perspective. 

When refugees video-conference into a classroom, or an office, this makes young students change their understanding of migration at an early age, away from the media and political spheres, or enables a company leader to think about hiring refuges in their workforce. We hope to reach more such clients.  

By focusing on enhanced technology and outreach, we’ll be able to exponentially grow our mission and reach a goal in the next 5 years of disbursing 5 million dollars annually to the refugees working for NaTakallam. At the same time, we hope to increase upward mobility opportunity to our freelance refugees to have them join our team as core staff and develop a program in which refugees are teaching refugees languages too.

With financial sustainability as a goal, the biggest hurdle our project will face in the next couple of years is undoubtedly the difficult and uncertain economic situation ahead of us in a post-Covid19 world. As for any entrepreneurial project, an economic downturn is the best test for the viability of a project. If it can survive during an economic downturn, it has proven its sustainability. 

 Our organization is humanitarian at its core, but we realized along the way that running it as a for-profit, with flawless modern day tech, is what will make our impact biggest. We are at a tipping point in our growth and would have never imagined we’d get to where we are today--but this is minimal compared to the need--and the solution to make that scale is a tech platform. We have a product with a customer base and proven success, and we are looking to scale with the launch of our automated user interface and website--which currently remains very basic. 

 The quality of the learners’ experience is something we are deeply keen on and we strive to update and enhance the user’s experience to maintain the user satisfaction. While our project is grounded in human interaction, humanitarianism and bridging cultures to make the world more united, tech is critical to achieving our goal at scale.

While technology is an enabler, it is now, at our stage of growth the barrier that will help us move to the next stage.

With a deteriorating economy and a divisive political and social landscape that often falls into scapegoating the “other” to justify its misfortunes, being able to bridge communities and advocate in favor of immigrants and refugees will most probably remain the biggest hurdle of our project.

NaTakallam will have to be very innovative and versatile to be able to convince business, schools and universities on the importance of global citizenship and cross cultural values. Thus, our collaborative efforts and partnerships must increase.

Through the Elevate Prize funding, NaTakallam will also have the leeway to develop a specific platform to provide better user experience and improved pedagogical resources. Through such an investment, our solutions would be greatly advanced by providing greater financial inclusion and independence to refugees we work with.

To scale, we are  keen on enhancing the student-tutor pairing process through the use of AI and Machine Learning (it is currently done manually). We are looking to create a semi-automated system as the human side has enabled great matchmaking to date, which we consider one of the pillars of our success. We are very much committed to not being a marketplace as we monitor the income of our tutors and try to bring them as much as possible to minimum wage/evening out of the income.

We attribute a large part of our current success to our collaborations in the following categories:

-        NGOs as Implementation Partners, for refugee sourcing and payment, including Arcenciel (Lebanon), Re:Coded (Iraq), IRC (Global), Jesuit Refugee Services, the IOM, American University in Iraq, UNHCR- Costa Rica + Trinidad & Tobago, PASO Colombia, Proyecto Habesha 

-        NGOs who help spread the world about our services/use our language learning and translation services, namely the ICRC, Sesame Workshop, the IRC, Ground Truth Solutions, Save the Children, Danish Refugee Council & more

-        Private sector companies who support our work as partners or clients, including Skype/Microsoft, WeWork, Ben & Jerry’s, Buzzfeed

-        Schools and universities who partner with us to provide NaTakallam as a complement to traditional coursework, including Yale, Columbia, BU, Tufts, UC Berkeley, UPenn, Georgetown University, New York University, University of North Georgia, University of Exeter (UK), Guilford College (Every Campus a Refugee), Davidson College, Rollins College, Boston College, Duke, St. Catherine’s, LaGuardia Community College

-      Third Party organizations offering pro-bono support/scholarships/mentorship/housing and other, including the Tent Partnership for Refugees, Qatar Foundation International, Columbia University’s Startup Lab, Station F’s founder program and SINGA in Paris, where our Co-founders are now based, TrustLaw, the members-only service of the Thomson Reuters Foundation which offers NGOs and social entrepreneurs free legal assistance.

Since launching, we received grants, prizes, and self-generated revenue. Our revenue streams are commission-based, coming from sales and subscription fees for individual and corporate packages, university partnerships, and translations. 

All of our services lines operate on a commission-based model, split between NaTakallam and the displaced persons we serve. 

Refugees and displaced persons working as teachers, tutors and conversation partners earn anything from $10usd to $70usd/hour and NaTakallam actively monitors what each makes on a monthly basis to bring them as close as possible to the minimum monthly wage in their country of location. 

For language learning and cultural exchange seeking clients; including individuals, schools & universities, as well as organizations/corporations, sessions are purchased in various bundle options 5 hour and 10 hour packages, at a rate that ranges from $13-225 USD per hour, of which NaTakallam retains 30-40% on average. 

For Arabic, we offer a full-on curriculum option in partnership with the head of the Arabic department at Cornell University, sold in a bundle of 25 hours at 750usd (30usd/hour.)

Translation services are charged on a competitive per-word rate,of which roughly 30% goes to NaTakallam.

To date, we’ve earned over $1,500,000 in revenue in sales, with over $800,000 directly into the hands of refugees. The rest of our expenses have been covered by non-dilutive grants from competitions and foundations. Our goal is to become fully self-sustainable. 

Since its launch in 2015, NaTakallam has generated over $1,500,000USD in revenue. We’ve gone from a very specific start, learning and prototyping ideas with a focus on Syrian refugees teaching Arabic over skype, to steadily and successfully diversifying our services,adding other languages but also curated programs in schools and universities as well as translation services, finding a point at which commercial opportunity --which can enable scale--and profound impact meet. Our current cost recovery is roughly 66%, relying only for one third of our expenses on external resources, which come from grants, and an investment from a philanthropic venture fund. 

We've accomplished this at a slow and steady growth pace, enabling us to learn & understand the needs of every one of our business lines, namely: 

(1) language learning

(2) academic programming 

3) translation services.

 Impressively, what we’ve done has been through mostly manual work. 

As we continue recruiting more and more refugees, we're also exploring ways of using AI to accelerate the process. As we ramp up technology, quality, and capacity, we will go from mostly organic sales through press and word of mouth, to a full on strategic plan for marketing and sales, including both B2B and B2C.

In the past 12 months we’ve received $20,000 from MIT Inclusive Innovation, $60,000 from the Alfanar Venture Philanthropy Fund, $10,000 New Voices and over $500,000 in self generated revenue

Financially, NaTakallam has cumulatively earned around $500,000USD in funding from foundations, like Alfanar, GHR, NewVoices, and prizes ( World Bank, MIT, Columbia etc.) 

Our co-founder was a Cartier Women's Initiative finalist and Halcyon Incubator fellow, receiving mentorship and support through these programs. 

We’ve also received 3rd party sponsorship of our K12 and "Refugee Voices" cultural exchange programs, through Qatar Foundation International and Ben&Jerry’s. 

From an operations perspective, we work closely with UNHCR, the IRC, and numerous other NGOs on the ground to recruit refugee tutors and translators. We also partner with schools and universities worldwide to implement our language/cultural programs.

Since 2015, we have generated $1,500,000 in revenue.

Our estimated expenses for 2020 are $640,000 with an estimated 55% going to our refugee conversation partners for their work, and the remainder allocated for staff expenses, including IT and overhead expenses. Winning the Elevate Prize would help us boost our IT development and training for conversation partners.

The Elevate Prize will allow us to expand our operations by establishing the technical platform to scale up our programs and deliver them in schools and universities as well. It will also allow us to bring on the necessary staff members to solidify our content and training. With this solid foundation, we will be able to test our program and identify the specific programs that work best and for whom they have the most impact. We would also be able to identify how we can scale up such programs through community outreach and effective communication. This would mean that when the  funding ends, we will have the ability to ensure that our project will be sustainable and our impact concerning the positive impact of immigrant and refugee communities long lasting.