DANIEL KERBER: My name is Daniel.
I'm a founder of More Than Shelters,
a German-based social business.
I'm also representing on behalf a Kilian Kleinschmidt,
who cannot be here today.
He's the senior camp coordinator at Za'atari refugee
camp in Jordan.
As we already heard yesterday from Nick,
there are today one billion people
on this planet living in unhealthy, unstable, and unsafe
conditions.
This very year, we have 45 million people
being refugees, settling in refugee camps
in miserable and mostly illegal refugee
camps and illegal settlements worldwide.
And every eight minutes, one family
is leaving home to find security, dignity, and hope.
But they will hardly find it.
So our X is to turn the most miserable places on this planet
into livable, sustainable, and innovative environments.
Let me take you to Za'atari refugee
camp, where I'm working with Kilian.
It's just a few miles from the Syrian border,
and 100,000 people live in that area that
could contain 1,000 football fields.
$500,000 a day are needed to maintain the basic services,
like for example, trucking in 3.5 million liters of water
a day.
50% of the inhabitants are under 18.
In summer, we have temperatures up to 110 degrees.
In winter, we encounter even snow.
So refugee camps, as you can see here on the plan,
are, per definition, temporary solutions.
And that is how they are planned.
So a huge logistical effort is put into place
to bring tents, water, bread, and just
deliver the basic services.
And I think we all agree that this
is OK for a few weeks, or even some months,
but the actual statistics show and prove
that the average lifespan of a refugee camp
today is up to 20 years.
And the average length of stay of a person is up to 12 years.
So our mission is that we have to stop looking at those camps
as a kind of temporary solution.
We really have to transform them into a long term
set of opportunities for people who've lost everything.
And the inhabitants, they already do.
And that is great.
Those people are taking every chance
to improve their daily living conditions.
They improve their shelters with whatever
they find to adapt them to their family sizes
or culturally-known patterns.
Shops are opened every day.
In the camp, we find the fastest growing market
in the Middle East today, with a monthly turnover
of $30 million.
For example 50,000 chickens are sold every month.
It's crazy.
This is the first bike store, which is a very good idea
because the demand for transport of people and goods
is very high.
We see a robust rental market.
This is a rental shop for wedding dresses and suits.
Food production is rising.
Restaurants are opening.
And here, you see a man welding a container moving device out
of what we call privatized fences and car wheels.
They also invent social and governance structures.
So in total, we see a multi-layered urban life
that is arising.
So those people take the chance to go from survival
to development and growth.
And this is very good.
But we have a huge problem.
Because all of this is completely illegal.
Refugees have always been seen as victims and a huge burden
for poor host countries.
So their legal statutes is forbidding
every commercial activity or labor.
The humanitarian relief sector has its focus only
on the tremendous logistical efforts,
and today's technical opportunities are not available
onsite.
So we have to change that.
Those people are not passive victims,
they're active inventors.
So let's invent with them.
So if people know best what they need, and the existing
conditions are not adapted to what we need to bring,
then we have to do something new.
So in December 2013, the first ever multi-stakeholder design
tank and innovation workshop was held
in the camp, co-hosted by the city of Amsterdam.
With all humanitarian agencies, all the
inhabitants, urban planners, international experts,
and most important, with the local authorities.
We all agreed that we are willing to contribute,
and we discussed and worked on the future
of the camp and its relation with the region.
We all agreed that the camp is not a simple thing.
It's a complex organism.
And we need to foster a multi-dimensional evolution
of the people in the camp.
We need to focus on the opportunities for all parties.
We then elaborated the first grid
of linked solutions on all major topics like water, telecom,
housing, education, commerce, food, transportation,
electricity.
So I will show you some examples.
So the sewage system implemented by the United Nations
became useless because people were just
transferring the urban planning permanently.
So the consequence that you can see here
is that black water is either penetrating the soil
uncontrolled, or it has to be extracted and transported
far away at high costs.
So this is one example of very temporary thinking
that is not sustainable.
So why don't we look at sewage as a resource?
We could use it as a fertilizer, for example,
for urban farming projects.
So let's find a smart and simple technical solution
to process it within the camp and connect this method
with the regional wastewater management system,
create micro businesses around that,
make joint ventures between Jordanians and Syrians,
and scale it up within the region.
Here, you see the container moving device in action.
And that is, of course, something good.
But it's also a problem.
As inhabitants create new settlement patterns constantly,
we have no idea about the further development
of the camp.
So the solution was that we GPS tracked every single container
to get real time flexible urban planning information
and learn from that informal spatial set
up more about the social dynamics.
To understand the organism camp better,
and to provide better services so we could bring schools
where they are really needed, we can
define commercial zones, et cetera.
Third, we only have uncertain quantity and unknown quality
information about the refugee community.
We have no precise information about the skills
and the level of education of the inhabitants.
So we installed a precise biometric based ID system
containing all relevant information,
and that fosters the quality-based participation
that we are implementing and creates business networks,
also within the region, and develops
adapted on site vocational training.
We even thought a bit more visionary about this thing.
Why don't we install a permanent fab lab or make a space?
Why don't we use rapid prototyping?
Like 3D printing or [INAUDIBLE] was suggesting
even solar centering to produce shelters on site
with local resources, enhance the flexibility of the design
to produce shelter according to family
sizes and cultural expectations.
Why don't we find re- or upcycling waste or energy
systems?
We have implant solar and wind energy
and adapt those technologies to the local context.
We can raise connectivity through the camp,
through a network of hot spots and SIM cards,
and then bring a mobile payment system.
So let us leverage emerging technology and ecosystem
collaboration to evolve many sectors involved in the camp.
For that we are building an innovation
and bridging agency on site with a small HR team of three
holistic planners, that is the little blue dot on the bottom.
And they leading and facilitating
a permanent innovation process in the camp.
So it is a dialogue based, creative engine
to deliver multi-layered solutions
and a driver for growth and opportunities.
So we have to combine that with the best of social technology,
technical, and economic innovation
that we can find worldwide to implant short, medium,
and long term solutions, and to shift legal structures
and regulations.
So the city of Amsterdam already agreed
and provides integrated urban planning.
The Dutch government is supporting
a long-term regional development plan through VNG.
The BMW Foundation connected its Young Global Leaders network
to the project.
The Vitol Foundation is co-finanacing us,
so we already found many, many partners, governments,
the social design department of the Academy
of Fine Arts in Hamburg, MIT, Harvard,
they are all committed.
So our next step is then to implant this docking station
permanently and to build more active of those holistic pilots
to reach local inhabitants with resources and partners
from all over the world.
To connect Za'atari and the region
to the opportunity of the 21st century.
In that setting, we will learn, adapt, and invent every day.
The plan is to change Za'atari, and then
move beyond to leverage our docking station approaches
for collaborative innovation on challenges and opportunities
in other vulnerable communities worldwide.
Thank you very much.