Currently there are about 65 million refugees worldwide.
50% of them are children
and only 25% of those refugees are getting a secondary school education,
and only 1% any higher education or work related learning.
So our focus is on trying to
inject education into the chaos
so that people can be
working towards their future.
I studied English back in Syria.
I studied English literature.
But in order for me to apply for a scholarship
I had to take the IELTS exam.
To do the IELTS exam I need to pay money.
I didn't have a penny.
What I did
I went online.
And I'm really grateful for the website,
the FutureLearn, the online learning.
I went to their website and there was like,
"Understanding IELTS" which was supported by the British Council.
It took me about 6 weeks.
I studied day and night, day and night.
I mastered the IELTS.
Then I got some money about that time,
and because there were scholarships
to afford the IELTS exam,
so I went and applied and I got my test.
And I applied for different scholarships,
I managed to get 4 different scholarships,
then I had to pick the one that I liked.
Not the one they are giving to me.
So today I am studying at the University of London.
I'm doing a Master's degree in violence, conflict and development at source.
I think there are such great opportunities
to actually bring technology together,
which is becoming more and more accessible,
and on the other hand a problem
that seems to be growing, frankly, for the Western world.
The refugee topic as a whole.
Techfugees is a non-profit that brings together
people from the world of technology
and bridges the gap between the world of technology
and the NGOs who are working on the ground.
I was here today to talk about
language for resilience
carried out in the Kurdistan region of Iraq,
Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey.
And we spoke to lots of agencies,
UN, non-governmental ministries,
as well as refugees and IDPs
internally displaced persons.
And we spoke to them about how they are able to enhance their own resilience
in times of shock and crisis
and how language fits into that.
Kiron is about offering access to
higher education using E-learning.
Their goals should be to get all of the papers of the documents,
get the right legal status to start studying at university.
During those two years they can study online with us.
It does not matter where they are
and most of the courses
will be recognised by our partner universities.
So when they then apply to a partner university
and are accepted there
they'll already have a nice set of credits,
university credits, that they can take with them.
So my primary experience is with offering higher education online
and so we were talking in particular about
ways to make English language learning accessible to refugees.
One way to do that might be with, for example,
the IELTS courses offered by Cambridge English and the British Council.
English language learning really is very, very critical for refugees
and we're looking forward to
helping to incubate some solutions
that facilitate the learning of the English language
for refugees and technology.
Education is extremely important in terms of
enabling them to grow and learn
but also in terms of becoming integrated into
host countries and societies.
So I've been able to observe how refugees
engage in business activity
and how they, through the creativity that they bring
and the experience from their original nation,
how they can, you know,
make a difference to creating the sort of structures in refugee camps.
In place we have infrastructure,
there's been a lot of initiative.
There are a lot of NGOs working in the Middle East in the refugee camps.
There, they are trying to provide education.
We can use this.
They're already infrastructured or online
or they are available, I think.
If someone wants to do something,
you can get in touch with these people.
You can get in touch with them so you can learn
or you can contribute.
So we are a small grassroots charity.
The plan was that I would send
educational resources out to camp
to enable the refugees there to be learning while they were passing the time.
Transpired that there wasn't really anybody there I could send anything to
and very quickly we realised that we were going to have to become the response ourselves.
So what I'm really excited about from today
is that we'll be able to collaborate.
So each of us has been working really, really hard
on our individual piece of the puzzle
and if we put them all together we will be able to have
a really good response to the refugee crisis.
So the School Bus Project are here today
also looking for volunteers.
So if you have been wondering what you could do to support
please have a look at our website
www.schoolbusproject.org
We're on Facebook
and we're looking for people to sign up
to do our teacher training,
to come out and volunteer,
to work with refugees
either in home communities or out in the refugee camps.
So if you have been thinking maybe you wanted to do something,
now would be a really good time to take action
and sign up for our teacher training.
Thank you.
If you'd like to get involved with Techfugees
there are many ways that you can do that.
The simplest and most easy way
is by getting involved with us via social media.
You can join our Facebook group,
you can also like our Facebook page
and you can follow us on Twitter
@techfugees
You can also become physically involved
by coming along to one of our hackathons.
We run hackathons around the world
and the next one we are running in the UK
is going to be running alongside
TechCrunch Disrupt.
Don't worry if you are not a programmer.
There are many kinds of people who participate in hackathons,
from entrepreneurs to educators,
to designers, to, of course,
programmers and software engineers,
so if you're interested, come along to one of the events.
I'm sure you'll find it very inspiring
and you will feel
like you're really contributing to a very good cause.
We're taking the language resilience work forward in one way
where we are replicating
a model called Colleagues Across Borders,
where mentors in the UK, psychotherapists,
they mentor through an online remote buddying system,
psychotherapists in conflict zones,
and we're going to try and replicate that
for English language teachers in the UK
who can then work with English language teachers in the Middle East.
So if you like the idea of helping refugees
get access to higher education through E-learning
there's a range of ways that you can get involved
with Kiron and support us.
You can volunteer for us directly.
We have over 300 volunteers
all around the world who help us,
remotely or in one of our offices.
You can, if you teach at a university,
you'd become a direct academics volunteer
and actually teach our students
via video-conferencing formats.
You can go to our website and donate.
You can like us on Facebook,
share our messages.
There might be more donation campaigns coming up
so some of them is just sharing.
It means a lot to us actually.
You can get the word out,
be sure that those refugees that you're in contact with,
or your social circle is in contact with,
know about Kiron and know about this option
to study online for free
independent of your legal status
or your school certificates.
Finally, and this goes beyond Kiron,
I would like people to adopt more of an attitude of sharing educational content.
So often, educational content originally is financed by
the state or government anyway,
it's financed by the people.
But many times it stays locked away in a copyrighted way
within, like, some laptop of some professor
only to be seen by the students of that university
and I really hope that increasingly
we get more of an attitude to share content.
This is also how E-learning can really unfold its potential.
If many stakeholders, many universities,
work together, to share their content,
really reach effects of scale
and really, really unfold the potential of E-learning
so I hope you'll carry that message with you,
no matter what.
Thank you.