my name is fael s m uh I was born and raised in Iraq in the city of Babylon grew up in academic family my dad is a doctor my mom is a lawyer and I'm the failure so the person who's giving a t talk here is the failure of the family so I grew up in Iraq Syria Lebanon and Malaysia and I've seen firsthand the cost of talent and the fact that they were forced to leave their homes so the subject of lifting people up and the subject of International Development is not just theoretical academic
subject for me it's what I think about the whole time as you probably know the United States has been trillions of dollars in the wars of Iraq and Afghanistan only to replace Saddam Hussein with Iran and the Taliban with the Taliban a great of investment right so uh I started looking I start asking questions and I found that the current system of Aid is filled with corruption too many middleman too many Gatekeepers and the money hardly makes it to the people that intends to help so the intention and the big picture is good but to
really actually get help is very difficult and according to the World Bank it can cost up to $20,000 to create one job in International Development there is still better investment than Twitter or Theos but still that is a lot of money wasted and but we also found and that's the good news is that almost half of the people in the region say that they intend to start a business in the next 5 years that is millions of innovators millions of entrepreneurs millions of creatives who would have their skills wasted if we don't invest in them
so I start thinking about what if we actually redefine the model of Aid what if we actually redefine the purpose of Aid instead of just being a do good bureaucracy to actually remove the barriers and and Define the purpose of Aid as moving people towards normaly meaning moving people toward the world of supply and demand and we did just that so we made it very easy for people to actually get funds and that's the the process that we follow and also to think about investment we think about the one that can stimulate economic growth and
also to fight the corruption crisis and I call the corruption disease in most of the Middle East we actually make it one grand per one person so in that way there is little system of favoritism little system of trying to choose people who are connected to the political Elite and have and have it forward so that being said what we found was really amazing we found that the moment we move people towards that they're far more accountable to their own communities not to us this is a story of one of the great stories that we
supported which is a founder of hakam Hashim hakam is a founder of Lego he's in the city of musul which is used to be what Isis declared the caliphate and he founded a texi female company and now with the $3,000 I kid you not he now hires more than 57 people so think about the return of investment and he is not alone he is actually one of 250 projects we supported here is Han Hamada Hani is a Syrian refugee who lives in Turkey Han is a self-learner he learned Turkish and he was you know what
I'm going to start a business that teaches Turkish to new immigrants and then he built up a business and with a $3,000 he also now has 33 people staff all of them are refugees teaching Turkish so look at the new model with $1 million we were able to create 35,000 jobs compared to the old model that you can only create 50 jobs so which one which investment is better okay this is that's like straightforward right and what's also amazing after we actually tried that we saw that the variation of this model is already being filled
right now in Ukraine in some parts of India some parts of Africa so we're not only ones doing it and the lesson of of my talk is Aid doesn't have to be costly to be effective you might actually be wondering right now why am I talking about Aid development and Innovation while the Middle East is at War right now and the answer is the old methods and the old and the past is actually what got us here by focusing on the future by focusing on Innovation entrepreneurship I believe we can transform the region from a
region that's filled with conflict and War to a region that people decide to stay and invest in to invest in the talent other than place that people escape thank you so much Steed thank you oh
