Humanity Lab Foundation

I have deep rooted conviction, passion and drive for the work that I’m doing, and have assembled a powerful team of consultants, advisors and volunteers with the same conviction. This Prize will help us exponentially expand our impact and institutionalize our work. 

We are at a critical growth stage as the world finds itself at a pivotal moment. Decision makers face a choice between perpetuating the status quo that enabled the crises currently gripping the world or opening up the decision making process to include the people who those crises impact the most.

We will professionalize our operations, staffing and program design and evaluation. Since our founding, we have operated with 100% volunteers and on a shoe-string budget. Yet our work is high-level and inspiring. We are powered by 73 volunteers from 31 countries, donating 123,600 hours, under my tireless leadership. Lack of funding did not impact our bold and audacious vision or success, however we are outgrowing ourselves.

This Prize will help us invest into creative advocacy creative campaigns, partner with policy experts, and build our alumni community (100,000+ participants to date). 

I’m keen to join a community of like-minded activists/creators to learn, expand our reach, and collaborate.

The daughter of refugees, growing up in Syria attending a UN refugee school, followed by continued displacement and loss from Hurricane Katrina, shaped my fierce vision in founding the Humanity Lab. As an activist/humanist, seeing the depth of human suffering at the hands of inefficient policies/social systems, juxtaposed against the resilience of local communities, ignited my work. Having studied Anthropology/Sociology, Social Policy, and Public Administration at Harvard University (Fellow in Public Policy & Management), I consulted foundations, governments and large institutions (UN) in change management and social impact. At the UN, I led global engagement for the UN Secretary-General’s Envoy on Youth and was Coordinator for the UN Secretary-General’s World Humanitarian Summit (WHS). In the midst of planning the WHS in 2016, I had a problem. Two members of my planning team were denied access to the Summit they helped plan. Both were US residents and employed by the UN, but, because of the color of their passport, they were denied a VISA. The Humanity Lab was born to ensure that no one is left out of critical conversations because of the color of their passport, background, income level, or identity. I will keep fighting to democratize change.

COVID-19, widespread political instability and upheaval over issues of racial injustice have laid bare the inequities and injustices that continue to plague societies around the world. Never before has attention been more focused on the economic, social, health and democratic disparities that are devastating countless nations.  As we grapple with COVID, spiking social unrest, and a weakened global economy, 36% of the world's population live in extreme poverty, 79.5 million are refugees, and 690 million people live with hunger. Marginalized individuals bear the biggest burden of this failure. While social and political systems remain inadequate, passionate people fill the gap, with the economic impact of volunteerism valued at $1.348trillion (2.4% of global economy). While institutions talk about marginalized communities more than ever before, they still aren’t listening to those communities or seeing them as partners in change. Only 2.1% of international aid goes to local NGOs. Humanity Lab fundamentally alters that equation by democratizing a key opportunity to bring about change. We work with diverse stakeholders in the development ecosystem. By investing into capacity building and creating inclusive spaces to shape global policy, we empower and amplify the voices of the people traditionally left out of those conversations.

We fundamentally alter that equation by democratizing key opportunities to bring about change. We catalyze progress on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and shift the historic inequality of global development systems by ensuring those most impacted by global problems are part of shaping, designing and leading solutions that work.

Systemic exclusion of minorities/differently-abled/marginalized communities is deeply rooted in global institutions that are ‘too big to fail’. It’s impossible to deliver on the promise of ‘equality and justice for all’ without acknowledging the inherent value, role and dignity of every human. Many SDG targets/indicators are embedded in confronting public beliefs, norms and behaviors that fuel racism, discrimination, sexism, inequality and social ills. Our approach is anchored in shifting behavior of organizations, institutions and people over time.  

In unlocking human capital and catalyzing social innovation, we enhance the collective-action needed to improve the well-being of billions of lives. 

We seed large-scale systemic behavioral change by:

1. Mobilizing grassroots ownership of the SDGs through campaigns, advocacy and creative collaborations.

2. Building capacity of stakeholders (governments, institutions, civil society, individuals)

3. Facilitating collaborations to create more human-centric, local and equitable outcomes for development (through BrainTrusts + implementation support)

Our approach translates community outrage to institutional breakthrough.

Creating a systemic change through multi-pronged programming aiming to developing the capacity of change agents, organizations and institutions committed to human development and equity:

EDUCATION (Leadership development + change management training)

ADVOCACY+MEDIA (Sparking intellectual curiosity & dialogue through creative media/campaigns & public engagement)

BRAINTRUSTS+COMMUNITY (Knowledge-exchange + cross-sectoral collaboration)

ADVISORS (Supporting transformation of individuals, organizations and systems)

Phased programmatic approach:

PHASE 1: PUTTING COMMUNITY AT THE CENTER (Advocacy+Education) 

→ Mobilize (movement building) 
→ Develop capacity (training + coaching)

PHASE 2: UNLOCKING COLLABORATION OF COMMITTED INDIVIDUALS IN COMMUNITIES, ORGANIZATIONS AND INSTITUTIONS (Community+BrainTrust)

→ Develop network of communities of practice
→ Facilitating knowledge exchange & infusion of solution-based thinking - curated group of practitioners equipped with tools and training for diagnostics, ecosystem through-leadership and project ideation
→ Forge collaborations to fuel implementation of creative human-centric solutions.

PHASE 3: SUPPORTING IMPLEMENTATION OF LOCALLY-LED INNOVATION (Advisors+BrainTrust)

SUCCESSES TO DATE:
> Global People’s Summit: 108M+reach; 164countries; w/UN
> Be The One Campaign w/Warner Music: 25M+reach; received UN SDG Award
> Finding Humanity Podcast: Human Rights + international affairs podcast; features heads-of-states, global leaders/activists (74,000+downloads)
> Launch of ‘Project Cedar’ Pilot in Beirut Lebanon with 85partners.
>“Outrage to Action” Masterclass taken by 14,350+people; 98countries