 I'm going to begin. It's early in the morning. Welcome, everyone, Eid Mubarak for those who are celebrating. I expect more people to come in, but we have a very distinguished group here with us, thought leaders from the Middle East, people working on the Middle East issues. And so the introductions will be very long. So as I introduce each person, we will have more people join us, I'm sure. I'm Layla Halal. I'm the director of the Middle East program at the New America Foundation. And very pleased to be here today. I want to thank Silitec for co-sponsoring and for making a big effort to pull this panel together. We have, as I said, a distinguished panel of experts who exemplify the subject of discussion, a socially innovative entrepreneurship in the Middle East. Most of the panelists have been linked in different ways, working with each other for some time. So they're very familiar with each other and allow me now to introduce you to them for those perhaps less familiar with their work. To my immediate right is Dr. Tarek Yusuf, a leading expert on youth inclusion and policy reform in the Arab world. He is currently CEO of Silitec, a regional Doha-based initiative that promotes job creation, entrepreneurship, access to capital, and the participation of young people in economic and social development. He is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institute, non-resident senior fellow at the Isam Ferris Institute of the AUB. His prior posts include Dean of the Dubai School of Government, associate professor of economics at Georgetown University, and senior fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. He served as chair and vice chair of the World Economic Forum Global Agenda Council on the Arab World from 2011 to 2000. You're currently the chair, still. OK, which you'll hold through 2014. Dr. Tarek is author of numerous tens of articles and chapters and co-edited volumes and reports, including unlocking the employment potential in the Middle East and North Africa toward a new social contract, generation and waiting, the unfulfilled promise of young people in the Middle East, and after the spring economic transition in the Arab world. We're pleased to have you with us today, Dr. Tarek. To his right is Dina Sharif, a founding partner of Ahead of the Curve. She is senior advisor on engagement at Silitec and a visiting fellow at the New America Foundation, where she is writing on socially innovative business models in the Middle East. She was associate director of the John Garrett Center for Philanthropy and Civic Engagement at the American University in Cairo. Dina sits on the board of numerous regional and national civic engagement organizations in Egypt and Jordan, including the Arab Foundation's Forum. She's a leading voice in the Mina region on education, youth engagement, socially responsible business, and strategic philanthropy. She was recently named one of Trust America's top 100 thought leaders on responsible business practice in Europe and the Middle East. To her right is Christopher Schroeder, entrepreneur and venture investor extraordinaire, who, Chris, as many of you know, is the author of the recently released Startup Uprising, the entrepreneurial revolution remaking the Middle East, copies of which are in the back of the room provided for you. He himself has incubated numerous startup companies, including HealthCentral.com, one of the nation's largest social and content platforms in health and wellness. He was previously CEO of Washington Post.Newsweek, Interactive and Legislate.com, the B2B, interactive platform on US and state legislation and regulation. He currently is an active investor and an advisor to top US venture capital funds and over a dozen consumer-facing social media startups. He speaks regularly around the globe and sits on a number of boards, including the American University of Cairo School of Business, the Jordanian incubator Oasis 500, the Middle East Online Entrepreneur Information Platform and Network WAMDA.com, among others. In a former iteration, he held a career in finance and served in President George H.W. Bush's White House and Department of State on the staffs of James Baker III and Robert Zollack. He was named one of LinkedIn's top 50 influencers. And finally, we have Fadi Ghandor, who is founder and CEO of Aramex International, the preeminent logistics and transportation companies in the Middle East and South Asia and the first company from the Arab world to go public on the NASDAQ stock exchange. He is a founding partner of Maktube.com, the world's largest Arab online community, recently acquired by Yahoo. Like his colleagues on the panel, he sits on numerous boards of educational and philanthropic institutions across the region. Fadi self-describes as passionate about social entrepreneurship. And in this spirit, one of his greatest feats, I think, is the founding of RUAD for development, an organization most likely familiar to people who follow entrepreneurship in the region. RUAD is a regional organization, private sector-led community development effort, which helps to reduce the marginalization of disadvantaged communities through activism, engagement, civic engagement and education. It is a remarkable organization that I myself have had the opportunity to visit. And it's in, the base is on Manjordan. And I should mention that the proceeds from Chris's book in the back of the room are all going to RUAD's foundation. So without further ado, I will now start the panel discussion. Just one quick note, though. Silitec is live tweeting at hashtag ArabFuture, and this event is being live streamed. So I want to reflect a bit initially on the role of the private sector. In Washington, we are very deeply engaged with the role of the public sector, this being the seat of the US government and as thinkers, researchers, actors here, we are very well versed in issues of public sector engagement. And we have with us today people who are very committed to the private sector, not as solely a place of profit-tearing, but also as an avenue, an arena through which we can promote development, youth engagement, and address the challenges of the region and of the world more broadly. So I want to start with you, Fadi, and ask you to sort of tell us your story in terms of how you've really come to merge the worlds of commerce and social development. What does that nexus look like in your work? Thank you, Layla, and thank you all for coming here. Can you hear me this morning? I, well, I think, you know, instead of, I'll just tell you how I'm looking at it. Please. From my perspective and maybe from a private sector perspective of how the private sector should look at it. So the basic premise is that we should, and this is an issue that has, that's a global issue. So it's not, you know, our issues in the Arab world are not much different than what you have, issues of governance, issues of empowerment, issues of youth unemployment, issues of inclusivity, issues of racial divides. I mean, these are global issues so that we don't think that these are only Arab issues. We have our issues and we need to address them and the public private sector posture and view of how they address the issues of development are also global issues. So we need to put that into perspective in that sense. So the Arab world is not alien to the rest of the world. We're totally connected to it. And the private sector in the Arab world is not different than the private sector in your part of the world where issues of the well-being of society rather than profit maximization and the business of business being only business and ignoring everything that happens around us in our societies is a global issue. And the way I look at it is that we need to move from that paradigm, the Milton Friedman paradigm that companies pure raison d'etre is to maximize shareholder value which is destructive to society. And then when you move from that you can basically see how the private sector can partner and can take up the responsibility of being part and parcel of how you address critical issues that affects the private sector and affect citizens in general and affects the well-being of the societies that we live in meaning, meaning if we address the issue of education for instance today if the private sector is not sitting at the table and participating structurally, structurally in how we educate our kids for employment not for reading only or not learning a certain language but for employment matching what is required in the future of jobs rather than in the past of jobs. This is the biggest issue today. I mean in Spain today I was reading the other day that youth unemployment is over 30% just like the rest of the Arab world and a lot of it is going to be endemic because you need to retrain those people to become in tune with 21st century requirements. And that's how I'm looking at things Leila. So bringing the private sector to participate and education issues and inclusiveness and how you talk about the Arab youth having and requiring to create 100 million jobs in the next I don't know depending on what study you look at in the next 10 years let's say while maintaining that 25% unemployment that is today cannot only be the responsibility of the public sector. We should not abdicate our role of taking care of our kids and the future generations that are coming into the region only to people in the public sector. And we have a responsibility and we have to step up and we have a lot of resources in the private sector in terms of networks, in terms of access, in terms of capital, in terms of knowledge, in terms of skills and in terms of jobs. That's the way I'm looking at it. Thank you. Dr. Tart, can you speak to the issues of sort of the demographics of the region and outlooks in terms of youth thinking and engagement as well as sort of strategies for addressing turning the private sector into a vehicle for change? Yes. Thank you, Layla, and thanks to everyone for being here this morning, and I'd mubarak to everyone. I think everyone in the room is familiar with the demographics driving a lot of this. I bet you most people in the room are also familiar with a lot of the issues that Fadi touched on, youth unemployment. So I take it as a point of departure in my comments that everyone is pretty much familiar with the challenges out there, as captured very nicely by Fadi. These are not new challenges. I have grown a bit old following, reading, and writing about these challenges. I would suggest that in fact it's been about 15 years since the Arab world has been faced with these complex structural and significant challenges affecting youth. Unemployment, education, housing, marriage, access to finance, and so I think that the challenges are fairly well known. At this particular moment in time I think the question, maybe one way of interpreting your question, is who is doing what about this and who can do what about it? I'd say two years ago at the outset of events in the region that toppled a couple of dictatorships and brought about this grassroots movements for change, there was a sense that in fact the youth finally will dominate public discourse, public policy, government attention, private sector investments, and that collectively they have managed through their sheer sacrifices across the region to finally make these issues the core of everyone's concern. And while that has been true, we very quickly early on recognize that the short-term dislocation, the short-term dislocation that many of these governments will find themselves in, governments in Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Morocco, Yemen, just to name a few, and by that short-term dislocation, crisis management approach, you've got political transition with a lot of economic uncertainty against the backdrop of a global economic recession, shrinking investment flows, the limited policy attention on the part of policy makers, no clear visions for where you would go in the future. We assumed that at least in the short-term, very little was going to happen by way of how governments can respond or would respond. After all, many of these challenges are structural, as Fadi noted, they require institutional reform, they require education reform, they require investments, and this was not going to happen in the short-term at least. Today, I think we have recognized that the short-term is going to be more of a long-term or likely to be one. The preoccupation of everyone with managing crisis day-to-day at the expense of focusing on what is needed is going to last far longer, and in some cases, I would argue, it's going to last possibly into the next few years or maybe a decade. What can be done meanwhile? What should we be thinking about? I think is where I want to come in and maybe finish with my starting comments. What can be done in my view, and maybe I now would argue that that is the only thing that can be done now. Governments are preoccupied, distracted, they have neither the money, the people, or the ideas to bring about change. If they did, they would have done it in the previous 15 years. Meanwhile, a private sector that I would think remains very hesitant, very unsure, Fadi is the exception. I wish I could clone him and take him around the region, but he does not exist in most countries, and I would think, I would actually go so far as to say that after recent events in the region, the private sector is going to be even less engaged. There will be less money available. The outside world is not paying attention to the region. The only hope we still have of at least getting some things right is for actors who have ideas, whether they happen to be in government, the private sector, entrepreneurs, organizations such as the one that me and Dina work for, coming together, engaging in social innovation. The subject of today's panel is social entrepreneurship. I think social innovation, by and large, is what we need, whether it's about social entrepreneurship, ideas and innovations and programs and entry points to provide access to finance, to provide training, to enhance employability, that is the only thing that will have traction now. And it turns out, in fact, that it's actually a very rewarding plan of attacking these long-term structural problems. After all, they focus on areas that have been neglected, areas that don't require government support only, and they bring about like-minded actors, people like George Sinorgas here, the head of the Curve, entrepreneurs, banks, all of whom can, I think, respond in the short term and bring about genuine results while we await for things to settle down and for comprehensive changes of institutions and structures to take place. I'm just gonna ask you to briefly follow up before I bring in Dina and then Chris. You're saying that Faddy's the exception. So, and obviously, Silatech is working to produce more Faddy's. So, can you maybe perhaps talk to us a little bit about how you conduct your work, how you engage with the business community and with governments in the region? What are your talking points? And points of entry. Hi. Great question, Layla, and I don't think we have a model that has been tested and tried that we're confident of. What we're doing, though, is focusing on areas and identifying partners that we can work with to achieve results on these areas. For example, I'll give maybe two, three concrete examples. And I think this reflects the big frame that Silatech is using, and I would argue many other organizations are using. So, in Morocco, we're working with the postal bank, a bank that has 3,000 branches across Morocco. We're working with them to introduce savings products for youth. Saving schemes that incentivizes youth to actually open up savings accounts so that they have an entry into the banking system. Those savings products can, in the future, generate other products, loans which we are actually offering to another banking institution in a place like Yemen, so that access to finance is done at a very early point, so that microenterprises and microinterpreneurs don't only have to rely on families or friends, but actually become bankable from the perspective of the financial system. What it took for that partnership to happen was us designing the right product, having the right partner who saw an interest, and came to this with the same economic objective, but also a commitment to social change. Most of our programs replicate this model. Every other alternative approach, for example, with governments, has taken more time, has experienced a lot of setbacks, and I would say eight times out of 10 did not go through. Why? Actors are changing, government officials are moving. That's not their primary area of interest. And a lot of the areas of interesting work that I think had to do with maybe access to finance, teaching entrepreneurs, getting young people to be more employable, they're not sexy. You can't go out there and make a big announcement as a government official and say, we're making 500,000 people more employable. What does that exactly mean? If you create jobs for them, I think that would be more appealing to governments, but it turns out, I would argue, that making young people at an early point in life more employable is the right long-term investment. So it is that sort of innovation in the various empty spaces that govern getting a job, getting the right skills, becoming married, having access to the banking system, and becoming a productive young adult who feels empowered. I think this is at the heart of what we do, and I would go so far as to argue that this moment in the region, this is the only thing you can do. Can I just add on to these, just... I think Todd, it doesn't always do justice to Silitec and some of the new things that they're doing. I think just to add on, one of the very new and different things that Silitec is pushing for is, in this issue of youth economic empowerment, you have all these different stakeholders. And previously, each group of people would talk about it separately as opposed to together. And one of the things that Silitec has been pushing for is to allow for dialogue between the public sector, the private sector, civil society. We've done multi-sectoral consultations in Egypt. We'll do another one in Palestine. And to really bring everyone to the table to see what they can do. And I think the other thing is that Silitec is working to engage the private sector as a real partner at the table, not just as give us half a million dollars to support skills development in Yemen. We're bringing them to the table as real partners who have something to say, which is what Fadi said. I think Fadi, you want to say something, don't you? Yeah, but back to the issue of the private sector. I think we need to, and I know you know that, but I think we need to just look at the region differently and away from the traditional players on the ground. I think the traditional private sector which had made its wealth historically through either government contracts, land, oil and gas, whatever you name it, maybe. Some of them are quite active, so I mean to be fair to them. But what you need to look at is the new entrepreneurial society that's popping up in the region. And they are the activists on the ground and they are the people that are totally in tune with the social issues that are happening. I recently had gathered some people to address the economic hardships in Jordan about six or seven months ago. So and I invited to bring in the private sector to address how to come together to see how we're gonna be helping marginalized communities on the ground through the web. And unfortunately, to support some of what you said is that my friends that come, that are my age and have made it in life did not show up. Who showed up as every single entrepreneur that was under the age of 30. Saying, okay, how are we going to bring in our skills, our capabilities and our small companies? These are the small startups and they came out with solutions, they engaged. We don't want to be, you know, Egypt and Tunisia surprised everyone in the change, the first change that happened because everyone ignored that the citizen feels that he's empowered today. I think we need to remember that that feeling continues to happen regardless of what you see on the ground today, regardless of the changes. The tools and the issues that unleashed empowerment for youth are still there and we need to be very careful not to look at traditional powers and look somewhere else because that's where things are happening. Yeah, I don't... Tina briefly, yeah. I wanna bring in questions. I think we're probably gonna go into your question but I think the youth are finding solutions and changing things on their own. So I'm gonna be a bit controversial and say that I think that there are paradigms and ideas that are, if not dead, dying. One of them is capitalism. The other one are concepts of corporate social responsibility. In the sense that traditional paradigm, traditional development paradigms, Tarek Yusuf has written about this a lot. Traditional capitalism, Fethi Handur talks about this all the time. And just the way that we see youth, all these things are changing and I think there's a moment where the youth are coming up with completely new business models, so as opposed to them coming and saying we wanna start an NGO, they're saying we wanna start a business that's going to solve a major social challenge and that will create jobs and that will expand the economy but that will solve the issue of garbage collection in Egypt or that will solve the issue of renewable energy. So there's this group of young entrepreneurs who are very civically engaged in the Middle East who are all coming up with amazing ideas about how to solve traditional development problems including employment. And Chris, can you comment on Tina's statement? Do you find that provocative? The point about capitalism? Is social entrepreneurship sort of a counterpoint to capitalism? I'm not an ism guy so I'm not here to debate one thing over the other. What I think the fundamental point everyone here is making and I'll come back to I think is dead on and that to me is all that really matters. I have to confess I have some performance anxiety being here because you guys don't know that some of you know this but you're sitting with three of the most important people thinking about these issues right now and so it's a little bit there and Layla I have to tell you that I think it's awesome that you and New American Dina helping here has brought this forth because I can tell you as the American here there are lots of journalists who do not want to look at the story that these folks are talking about right now when they look at the Middle East and I can tell you my experience writing the book that they're not a lot of think tanks that are willing to have a serious dialogue about this because we have in the West and America and Washington in particular narrative I mean all human beings have narrative bias right? We get stuck in our stories and we think about the world in one way and we have a great deal of difficulty thinking beyond things like Syria and Egypt as places of conflict and difficulty and this has been the big aha moment for me and what I've seen you know happening not just in the Middle East and around the world by simply going there and by simply being with people like the people on here overall because I can tell you that in my experience I have absolutely no clue what Syria is gonna look like in three months and I have no idea what Egypt is gonna look like in three years but to me the revolution that these people are talking about are facilitated by something which I can tell you with 100% certainty which is that in the next three to five years they're gonna be a lot more people in the Middle East with a lot more technology on their person and this is changing everything profoundly in very good ways. We sometimes get hung up about technologies being this thing over there that we can't get our minds around and it's like the Silicon Valley thing but technology in the hands of so many people really become like water or electricity it's just something that you assume and then you solve all sorts of problems because you have the ability to do it overall. I interviewed a ton of very big senior business executives in the Middle East in mobile companies and all of them told me that a place like Egypt within now two years, almost three years are gonna have 50% smartphone penetration and as you know most of these countries have 100% phone penetration right now. So 50% smartphone, a lot of us think smartphones are just like sexier phones or they're better ways to watch video but in point of fact what they really are is supercomputers in the pockets of 50% of humanity. In fact in the forward of my book Mark Andreessen wrote that he thinks within a decade two thirds of humanity five billion people will have smartphones in their pocket. This is literally the computer capacity to put a man on the moon in the hands of two thirds of humanity. This is 100% certain right? I can't tell you about other things this is not going away. And the essence of what this means is as I think these guys have talked about so beautifully is that so much innovation and problem solving is happening bottom up. Two of my favorite quotes in the book actually came from two of the people sitting on the panel and it goes not only to technology and business and whether we're talking about social entrepreneurship or entrepreneurship but it actually goes to culture and society and the way people think of each other and how they think of themselves. And Fadi said to me once when we were talking about technology he said there's no wasta on the internet. And for those of you who know what wasta is you know what he's saying but for Americans who have not heard that word I had not heard the word before I'd gotten there. I mean it's effectively who do you know? It's a whole system of favors that can be profoundly culturally impactful for young people who wish to rise and are constantly not able to because they don't know people. So folks used to tell me that if I ever got in trouble in the Middle East I should pretend to make a phone call to someone because a person who's hassling might in fact think I know somebody and that's kind of wasta in a nutshell. But what Fadi is saying is that with no wasta on the internet is that you can keep bypassing the traditional things that Tara was talking about before. And so the entrepreneurs are not sitting around and waiting and saying to themselves we need to wait a generation to fix education. They're putting on tens of thousands of videos in Arabic online to supplement education, right? I mean one of the great things about technology being the hands of so many people around the world is that infrastructure problems are viewed as software problems. You can really do really innovative things by connecting people overall. And the outcome of that is my second favorite quote which I think in many ways makes a distinction between the top-down world and the bottom-up world which is becoming strengthened that came from Deena to me and just hit me like a two by four where she said top-down world thinks of people as problems but in the bottom-up people are assets. Meaning everyone has got an opportunity to solve a problem in their backyard and that's what's facilitated. And my last comment would be therefore that in some respects to your original question the line between social entrepreneurship and entrepreneurship and by the way I see this in Silicon Valley even. The line between social entrepreneurship and entrepreneurship is starting to blur significantly because a new generation of people are saying look I'm happy to make money and I'd love to be very successful that's great but the way I run my company is gonna be under certain paradigms and by the way again I can solve a lot of very very interesting problems by being able one to see how the rest of the world lives two to be able to connect with each other in very very powerful ways three to innovate with each other very effectively and cost effectively because it's much cheaper to solve some of these problems this way and then remember that I mean it's a mind blow when I stop to think about this it seems so obvious but it really sort of blows me away. You know essentially all of the world's knowledge is that our fingertips essentially for free. And anyone who thinks that this is we're not entering a different world or that the traditional methods are somehow gonna be the dominant force of the next 10 years because they were in the last 10 years I don't think are asking some of the really most basic in some respects obvious questions. Great so I wanna talk a little bit about why I asked the question about capitalism and that is because we've sort of overlooked the fact that a lot of people who are in the streets in these mass uprisings were actually there because they were dissatisfied or disaffected by an economic approach which favored foreign investment which favored serving foreign interests which they were there to basically represent a critique of how the West and how states in the region have really engaged in a way that has kept people at home, harmed people's jobs and so forth and I think that this is something that's really overlooked. I mean we here in the West think a lot more about the political side of grievances and not so much the economics and so I want to ask the panelists to reflect a bit on US policy on the role of the West in both private sector development and more broadly development assistance. I mean I'm gonna open it up and say is US policy harmful or helpful to social entrepreneurship? Quickly and then I'll let Dina take this. I don't know if I wanna address the US issue but let me address the issue of capitalism and maybe governance and democracy. So I don't think people on the street where I don't think there is an encouragement or foreign investment in the Arab world. So that is a misconception. We don't accept foreign investment easily. The ownership laws in most of the countries in the Arab world do not encourage foreign investment. So let's put that to rest. We suffer miserably in the Arab world for an Arab to go up out and establish a company in a neighboring Arab country because we're not allowed to have 100% ownership of our businesses. So let's put that to sleep. In fact, if the Arab countries have brought down the borders of trade and allowed for foreign investment to come not because of capital but because we want knowledge to come. We want these Western companies to come and share knowledge with us and the transfer of knowledge and technology into the region which needs it badly. We certainly don't need capital in the Arab world. We are rich countries in most of the Arab countries and we can address all our economic issues from the countries that have the wealth. So that's a misconception. There is an anti-private sector attitude yes because they think the private sector is a profit maximizer and does not look at society in general and its well-being. But the critical issue for job creation in the Arab world is that Arabs trade with each other only 10% of their total trade. And if we think of jobs of instead of trade aid and Mike is from USAID. If we move from the aid mentality into the trade mentality and bring down the borders of moving people goods and capital, very simple formula. The Arab free trade agreement had been discussed long before the Europeans ever thought about having one region. Then I would tell you you are going to create one heck of a lot of jobs in the region. So that is what is missing in the region, the ability of having that. So the issue of capitalism is not understood very well in that sense. Perhaps it needs to be reconceived. Chris, you had a comment? Yeah, you go first and then I'll add something. Okay, I don't really know where to start. That's a loaded question. I think the discourse in the US has forgotten that at the core of all of these uprisings and I use uprisings and not revolutions very carefully is economics and the need for youth economic empowerment. And this is what Tareh Yusuf calls the generation in waiting. For those of you who have not read that book, I urge you all to read it. And this is really a generation that is not just waiting for jobs, but they're waiting for social equity, empowerment, inclusivity, many things that are missing or that were previously missing pre-2011. I think what's happening now is that youth are no longer waiting for governments to help them. They're no longer waiting for foreign aid to help them. They're no longer waiting for charity from NGOs or philanthropy, they're out there and they're saying this is a problem. We're now empowered because the fear factor is gone. They suddenly realize that they are citizens, they have a voice, they can make a difference. And they're coming up with these brilliant business models and are trying to fix these problems and create jobs on their own. Having said that, that doesn't mean that there aren't challenges holding them back and that they do not need a lot of support, access to capital, mentorship, capacity building, connections, social capital, et cetera, et cetera. But they are out there and they are trying to make a difference. The issue of traditional capitalism, and I said, when I said I think traditional capitalism is dead, everything Fede said is right and I think thought it will have a lot more to say about open markets in the Middle East and what that can do for job creation. But when I say traditional capitalism is dead, I mean that business as usual no longer applies. So this whole notion of businesses being created to just make money really is dead whether it be here or in the Middle East maybe new and emerging business models are still forming, are still not on solid footing, but it's happening. Multinationals, large businesses can no longer get away with just saying we're here and we're here to make money. That just doesn't work anymore. And I think what's happening now is that young entrepreneurs who are trying to start new businesses are all integrating this notion of social innovation at the core of their business models as the already existing businesses, large businesses, multinationals are struggling to figure out how to do that. So they're already doing it, they're doing it from the get go. And I think Senator Gose, George Khalif is here, the Arab Innovations Program. They knew this was happening early on and they started this program several years back. The issue of the US, I've been here for about five weeks and Laila has graciously connected me to a lot of people. I've attended a lot of talks, a lot of events. Every other day there is a talk about the Middle East in this city. I think that the US foreign policy is heavily focused on democracy, political reform, security, and they talk about economics. It's not that they don't talk about it, but they're not doing anything to support economic empowerment. I think they're one of the most significant initiatives that were launched were the Egyptian American Entrepreneurship Fund and the Tunisian American Entrepreneurship Fund and Obama has many times said that we are committed to entrepreneurship, supporting job creation, enterprise development, but these funds have yet to really materialize in a big way and they have, you know, $60 million was approved to go into the Egyptian American fund. That's $60 million to help create, how many jobs do we need taught it to create in Egypt a year? A million. A million jobs a year, $60 million versus $1.3 billion in military aid. Yes, granted they stopped that, but still. The whole question of how aid needs to, the restructuring of US aid really needs to be thought out and really needs to be thought out in light of the fact that nobody's going to wait for the US to support them, they're doing it anyway. So I think if the question that needs to be asked is how the US can really support players on the ground, empower their people and build up the new and budding entrepreneurial culture that is there. Tariq, do you want to comment a bit on, you know, whether the Gulf is a partner in this enterprise? Is it the US, who can help? And then, Kershia, thanks. Layla, you're asking this, if you'd asked me this question four or five months ago, I would have said, the Gulf is in a position to help, should be encouraged to help and will hopefully provide the necessary help. Already a few months ago it became, it was obviously clear to me and many other people that the West wasn't helping. If the Arab Spring fails, and I hope it doesn't, it's fighting for its life at this moment, it will be in part because the West did not respond. The West looked the other way, was too distracted, too busy, the funds put on the table really were nowhere as significant or could have made a difference. A number of governments were left fighting for their own short-term stability and I would argue that in fact, one of the catastrophic mistakes made by the US and Europe in supporting their transition is that they looked the other way too soon. They left these countries to their own internal circumstances, regional outlooks, a number of which were very negative in the very first place. So the West had sort of looked the other way and the Gulf countries were in a position to help. Unfortunately, I think in light of recent events, it's looking also the case that most Gulf countries are not in a position to help. Countries such as Egypt, Morocco, Tunisia, Yemen, particularly because these are countries that are capital starved, are gonna become more capital starved in the near future. They're gonna be left more to fight for their own short-term stability. Gulf money that would have flown perhaps a few months ago without too many questions asked now will come at a moment where there's massive polarization, not just within countries, but between countries and a great deal of mistrust regarding the intentions behind whatever funding or support that's being provided. It's also the case lately that much of the funding that has gone into these countries so far is not the kind of funding that will support the things we have been talking about. Providing support for budgets, for subsidies, for border controls, for counter-terrorism, that's not supporting Arab youth, that's not supporting these transitions to actually succeed. This is buying time, this is buying favor. The sort of funding that perhaps can still happen will happen hopefully, and you mentioned $60 million, I think, between me and Fadi in the next few months, we're gonna be raising hopefully one fund at least with $60 million. We want other people to do more of this. So private individuals, actors, social innovators, coalitions of people like us can do a lot of this. The kind of funding that we need is funding that will in fact be bottom up. Do the kind of things that Chris have been talking about. Funding that will go to entrepreneurs. Funding that will go to innovators. Funding that will go to some government agencies that are doing the sort of thing that we all feel confident about. I don't know how that funding is gonna flow in, in the middle of short-term stability and the uncertainty, but if there are ways in which we can support it and incentivize it, that will be the funding, in my view, that will bring about long-term outcomes. That will bring the right results and will help push these very fragile transitions in the region towards greater stability. But the outside world, the traditional channels for capital flows, the aid I have to admit has been a dismal failure since the onset of these revolutions. And if the desire change in the region fails to materialize, there's a lot of blame that will have to be allotted to important actors, partners of this region who stood by and let very important transitions somehow slide into complete instability in the reversal of what two years ago looked like very important events for the region. Kristi wanted to comment and then we'll open it up for questions. Yeah, I just, I loved actually this exchange in many ways because it was something when I was reporting over the last year about this that I kept, it seemed like a dichotomy to me, but it really wasn't because you had Dina at one level who's talking about this is happening anyways and it's happening bottom up and it's not going back, which I completely agree with. And yet Tarik is pointing out, which is absolutely true also, which is that governments are playing a role. Even governments doing the wrong thing by definition is playing a role because they're there and they're present and they control borders and other things that have to do with the motion of good and everything else. How do you square these two things? And I became persuaded they're really not a dichotomy at all, they're just both realities. I mean all my excitement about technology and all the potential I talked about before I think is unarguable, but at the same time ecosystems matter. Your ability to have a rule of law, your ability to do a lot of very basic things in the motion as Fadi said of people and ideas is the difference between having a great 21st century economy and not. And so we've come back because I will speak bluntly about the American government, maybe in ways folks hear not. Mike is a hero, right? And there are heroes and patriots who really get bottom up and think about it, but they're playing in a world that is one unbelievably top down by definition and structure. They really don't have the mentality of the thought about how to address in scalable ways things that are happening bottom up. And very, very bluntly, a lot of your sisters and brothers who are in serving government now, and by the way it's not just older people. I mean it's amazing how their young people I know in the State Department in their 20s have sort of become cold warriors in their outlook towards the great grand bargains of life and what is becoming a very, very different world. And what I say, and I'm asked often by our government, so what should we do about all this? And my first line is a little bit sarcastic, but it's absolutely, I believe it. I said, just stop talking about it. I mean, as Dina said, there are speeches all the time. But the fact of the matter is there's so many basic little things that government could actually get right somewhat under the ages of sort of getting out of the way of what happens. Let me just give you one example of what I'm talking about. It's very illustrative. Well, I'll give you two examples, very quick ones. One, I don't know what the real number is, but the very fact that I'm told this is interesting in and of themselves. But that this Department of State has 17 separate offices of global entrepreneurship. Mike, you could tell me, maybe it's 10, but it isn't one. And that's just the State Department, right? So what kind of coordination over, as they've pointed out, are very, very small. I mean, we're talking about hundreds of thousand dollars, maybe a couple of million dollars in the grand scheme of things. How effective or efficient is that ever gonna be possibly in any kind of engagement? So if you're gonna have that in it of itself, stop talking about it and fix that. But here's the story, which I think tells you a lot about our times and is worth thinking about things going forward. I met this wonderful startup, amazing young guys, excellent engineers by any standard of any I think I've seen in the world from Cairo. And they were pitching an idea, and lo and behold, two very, very, very well regarded Silicon Valley venture capital funds wanted to bring them from Cairo to Silicon Valley to look to invest in them. They said, look, you need to be here in the first week of June. We're looking at two other companies that are just like you. This is not gonna happen over Skype. You got to come to Silicon Valley, and this was in late April. You got a month, but if you're not there, you're, we're gonna move on. So lo and behold, they go down to our embassy and say, I need a visa because I gotta get to Silicon Valley in a month. And they said, come back in August and we'll interview you. You know, stop talking about it. At that point, stop talking about it. Great, okay. We're gonna open it for questions. There's a standing mic in the back. If you don't mind lining up in the back, asking your question from the back. Meanwhile, can I say a couple of things? Yes, please, please. Just to, I think as we talk about economic empowerment and democracy in the region and the US policy in the region, one needs to look at governance and not democracy. And the people in the street expect their governments to deliver, whether democratically elected or not. And I think we're looking and we've had, and we can have a long discussion with Tarek about this. The issue of democracy takes a long time. As I had said once in a previous panel with Chris, is that we are a startup in democracy. So we need to take a long time to address the issue beyond the ballot box. It is not about the ballot box. People that are moderate people in Egypt went down to the street because they did not have bread, mostly. That's my view of it. It is about delivery of services and delivery of jobs at the end of the day. And that's where the biggest challenge is. The poster child, my last comment, the poster child of the Egyptian Revolution in the West, Wa'il Ghunim today. If you look at him and say, where is Wa'il? Do you know where Wa'il is today? Nobody knows where Wa'il is, but Wa'il decided not to be in politics. I had a long discussion with him. Many of you, many here had had a long discussion with him. Wa'il decided he wanted to start and has started something called Tahrir Academy. What does Tahrir Academy do exactly like Khan Academy? Because Wa'il thinks it is about educating these kids that are going to graduate and think about governance issues when they grow up rather than us telling people here, shove democracy down your throat and go vote and then let us all suffer because of the consequences of what we've elected. So we, the US policy in the region needs to think about that very, very carefully. When to tell us that the Western model actually works. In today's world, the streets are empty because your government is shut down. I'm gonna open it for questions and then if you have additional comments you can add them in response to the questions. Yeah, please, sir. Hi, I'm Greg Simpson. I'm with the Center for International and Private Enterprise. We're one of the four core institutes of the National Endowment for Democracy. And democracy is about leadership selection. It's also about decision-making and I'm not sure how you get these policies right if you don't have a democratic decision-making process. And that kind of gets to my question, which is where does the informal sector fit into all this? And I know that DeSoto went and talked to some of the relatives and friends of Muhammad who was easy and learned that for him to have gotten licensed as a fruit vendor in Tunisia would have taken 42 administrative steps, 152 days of standing in line and $3,200 in income, which is for him a year's income. There was frustration in the streets about economic issues but it wasn't just about the capitalist model or not capitalist model, it was about access, the system not working for them. And so many of the things you're talking about will work wonderfully for the people who already, for whom the institutions are already working and all you have the resources to get access in these institutions. But what about the informal sector for whom the system isn't working? How does that factor into the work that you're doing? Okay. I don't know if I'm gonna be able to answer your question directly, but you've highlighted precisely one of the flaws in the social innovation movement we've been talking about earlier. Social innovation by its very construction as we see it, as we have been promoting it is about marginal incremental change. It's about working in the spaces where you can get things done. It is not a substitute for long-term economic or institution reform, the sort of issues you have raised which apply not just in Tunisia, Libya and Egypt and elsewhere about property rights, the risk of expropriation, rule of law, these are the sort of things that require governments that have visions that are stable that are accountable to do them. And so, yes, we will not necessarily be able to tackle all of these issues through social innovation but perhaps by demonstrating how social innovation works we can affect the mindset of policy makers and get people to think creatively and innovatively about things as opposed to waiting for things to settle down to become far more stable. I agree with you and that would have been what I would have sort of footnoted what Fadi said earlier regarding governance or democratization. The outcome matters in this, the end game matters and the process as a result matters. We have to feel confident that whatever set of political dynamics in a transition, whatever set of ingredients we choose for that, whether it's through an elected parliament, a pseudo-elected parliament, an interim constitution, an interim government or a military dictatorship has to get us to the right end result. If it doesn't get us to the right end result there is no need for us to play a game for another couple of decades in the region of somehow justifying the status quo of the present simply because we could not get the desired outcome in place. That level of clarity I think has to be articulated, has to be engaged with and that's one area where the outside world should talk to policy makers and should call things as they are, as opposed to how we try in the region often to sell them. Do you think that the entrepreneurs, the people you're trying to talk to? We only have time for one question. I just wanna know if they have a role to play in helping get the policies right for others. I wonder if you're factoring that into the work you're doing. Who? Totally and I think to address your issue and part of the things that we're doing on the ground with the private sector is how does the private sector which has access, the powerful private sector, not all private enterprise, private sector that has access, that prides itself on access and cares about the stability of society because when you have a stable society you're actually selling more and you're making more profit. We're saying use that access to create laws that are inclusive to bring these kids who are in the informal sector to be part of the formal sector so that they can feel that they have a sense of ownership in their societies and thus stability. And a big part of the instability in the region is that these kids that go down to the street don't feel that they have a sense of ownership or are losing anything by actually toppling regimes or even creating havoc and chaos in the society they live in. So the private sector has, yes, has a very important job that says, here go knock on policy makers doors and tell them rule of law and inclusiveness is essential for you. I mean that's what I think that the change of roles needs to be partnering with the public sector to address these issues because it's in everybody's interest at the end of the day in a very selfish manner. I think just to add, I don't, your question, Greg, is really important and I think it's important to realize that everyone at this table and everyone that we work with thinks very carefully about policy, policy reform, governance, and process as thought at use of said. And everyone here is launching some kind of initiative to support what is happening on the ground specifically with regards to enterprise development. Fede launched something called corporate entrepreneurship responsibility. Ahead of the curve is launching something called entrepreneurship with impact. Silitec has a whole entire unit that's working on research and policy and that is meant to really engage governments, the private sector and in the process. But specifically with your question regarding informal sector, everyone is aware that the informal sector is massive and we need to find ways to formalize that sector and bring all of these small micro-businesses and this is something that Silitec takes very seriously and it's something that even within our initiative entrepreneurship with impact, there are a lot of social entrepreneurs at the base of the pyramid who have started small businesses around a problem that they face on a daily basis. So everyone I think is thinking about these issues and I think this is where you come to the question that Layla asked which is how can the US help and the US should really think about how to partner with these solid initiatives happening on the ground and there are a lot of programs that exist under a US aid. It's just how that money is funneled to the bottom is so hard and needs to be rethought. It really doesn't make it anywhere significant. So I think, please. Hi, I really appreciate that dialogue. I didn't mind that he asked a follow-up question, although they might mind, because this is this, we're right at the heart of the issue here. Good, I'm scared. And half of these youth are in the informal sector and it's, oh, yeah, Bill Lawrence, I fought in the trenches for a long time in the State Department on this stuff and then recently with Crisis Group and now I'm teaching at GW. The, this is critical. Now I worked at State Department a lot of these programs and early on and our main problem was not that we didn't understand what's going on, we saw this. Our main problem is that we saw these massive structural changes that would cause instability and we didn't understand why there wasn't a revolution. It was that all the books and all the analysis in the 2000s were about the durability of authoritarian regimes, which is very critical, because now we're seeing a lot of the vestiges of those old states reasserting themselves and reauthoritizing things, if I can coin a term and a lot of the wiring of the old state getting back to this informal section is there. I mean, right now Tunisia has declared war in the informal sector. They've linked it to terrorism, they've linked it to arm smuggling and we're back to chasing the Boazizis away. So Tunisia's going exactly in the wrong direction in terms of government policy. Todek mentioned that we need to make kids more employable and I agree with that but I agree also with the other panelists that it's really not, it's less about employable, it's more about making them entrepreneurial. You guys talked about savings products for Morocco, I'm almost done. But as you said, it's much more about capital flows. I mean, we were researching in Tunisia and I started a lot of these programs at State. We can only find one bona fide venture capitalist in Tunisia and you go around, there's no venture capital in the region of note and most of the investment. That's gonna change very soon. Starting to change, yeah. But that was where a lot of these programs were trying to go. And talk about liberalization in terms of the question you asked about liberalization and capitalism being questioned. I mean, the problem we found in the region was not liberalization without democracy or liberalization without a social safety net. We found liberalization without liberalization. You had liberalization leading towards kleptocratic governments and crony capitalism and all that. So you have all of that and reasserting itself. One final point. Right now with the transfer of all those companies, the Trabelsi and Ben Ali family controlled in Tunisia, that's not going to people with clean hands. We had a big discussion about it at an event recently in DC. It's going to people with questionable hands. So the revolution hasn't borne the fruit and a lot of this is not through lack of analysis. Thank you. We're all watching it go on. Thank you. So here's my question. Okay. Just to finish. You sound like Arabs. Yeah. Speeches. 12 years in the region. So I think it's all about mobilizing youth to solve problems, getting to what Dina was saying. And I think we need to turn to universities. We need to turn all these institutions around into setting youth at solving problems and think less about training and less about a lot of these sort of macro things and supporting budgets and actually ride the wave of what youth are doing already because youth have a lot of the tools but they don't have all the tools. Okay. Just the kids are going out and doing things regardless of what policymakers are doing. You have to know that. I mean, they really care less about what policymakers do. And that's the issue of the informal sector. A lot of it is voluntarily informal. I mean, they don't want to be formal because back to the issue of Tunisia, if you wage war on the informal sector, you're effectively waging war for taxation and formalization for their own purposes. So if you want to make them formal and you want them inclusive, it's not to cripple them because the cost of doing business is also high. So if you're in the informal sector, you're able to start up your business without having to worry about registering a company and getting killed by doing that as a business before you actually sell your first product. Go ahead. Can you please state your name, affiliation and question briefly? My name is Isay Hatti. I'm a Saudi businesswoman and head of the Entrepreneurship Action Council. My question is about trade policies in the Middle East. I mean, it's really a barrier for a lot of smaller, medium-ish-sized businesses that would like to enjoy possibility of supply chains across the Middle East. And so a thought that I toy with, a question is how can we circumvent policy, those policies that cripple us, are there ways to create platforms that are governed by private law, for example, in order to facilitate more trade? Can you give an example of a policy that acts as a barrier? Exactly. Plenty. I get it, I mean, I spent my life today trying to help young entrepreneurs understand how to set up businesses across the region. I mean, if you don't know, I'm an angel investor. I invest in a heck of a lot of companies in the region. They don't want my money most of the time. They want my knowledge and how did I set up a business across borders in the Arab world? That's the biggest enigma of them all. And it took decades to do that. And that's the biggest issue for the youth today. How am I gonna start a business in Jordan or in Lebanon, take the dust off it and say, I wanna implement this policy now because I wanna encourage trade, not be a protectionist society. And we are today a very protectionist region. We don't want people, we don't mind buying from the West, but we're scared to death to sell to each other. You should ask Turret Youssef about that. He's been writing about it since 2000 and... About what? Trains. Trains, facilitation, facilitation. Yeah, you're catching me at a moment where my faith in this region is at an all-time low. I don't see it happening. Yeah, but how can you... I'm not even thinking about that. There is far more interesting things that you can do at the national level in a lot of these countries than for you to imagine trade barriers coming down or unless of course you've got people like Fadi who can creatively arbitrage these constraints and teach others how to do that. And unfortunately, we don't have a lot of them. You know, after 2011, the Arab world was coming apart, not coming together. And this affected not just trade, but a host of other areas where typically you would think there ought to be more connectivity, movement of people, movement of ideas, movement of commodities and so... That is not one lucrative area for engagement at the moment. But perhaps just people invoked informal sector and a number of questions right now and I just wanted to make a couple of quick comments just to do justice to the issue. You can still work with informal entrepreneurs and support them without requiring them to become formalized. For example, in the case of Yemen, most informal entrepreneurs cannot access loans through the banking system because they don't have collateral, not because they don't have registered businesses. Most of the 90% of their businesses are not registered. We actually happened to run one of the biggest youth loan program in Yemen that has now become a model for doing it elsewhere. And the idea there is essentially to work with young entrepreneurs to make them more bankable, to lower the requirements for collateral or provide loan guarantees, something that nobody in the region does. But finally, Bill and perhaps to you and to others, not everyone wants to become an entrepreneur. Let's also be very cognizant of this. So making young people more employable, making them more employable is giving them more choices, is allowing them to discover who they are and allow employers, large employers in particular, to help select those who perhaps are better fit. So making them more employable is not just about writing CVs anymore, it's about a host of other skills that will allow them to become long-term learners, to become more marketable to multiple sectors. It's about a lot of the soft skills. I mean, the soft skills from entrepreneurship, and I'll just stop with this. I have discovered recently, one of the biggest benefits from entrepreneurship has little to do with the entrepreneurs themselves becoming entrepreneurs eventually. It's about the mindset change that happens. That's the skills, that's the approach to life, it's the attitude. This is empowerment. This is the kind of education that allows young people to not be dependent on the state or the large employer or on me or you. Tunisia in particular, there's a lot of this happening in Tunisia. Not to over, sort of, yes, we need more venture capital funds in Tunisia. We need a lot of other modalities for SME support in Tunisia. You know, it was frightening for me just to discover until recently that not a single microfinance institution was legal under the central bank of Tunisia until just a few months ago. This is a country that we considered for about a decade and a half the leading reformer in the region. Not a single micro. But that's in Western view. For those of us who were trying to do business in Tunisia, we knew that Tunisia was not an open market. Yes. Only Westerners said, here's a model. And it was primarily because of the liberalizing issues relating to women, which is great. But everything else was not working in Tunisia. Absolutely. So as a result of engaging with the central bank and policy makers, there is a law now in place that has just been, I think, adopted a few months ago. And as a result of this, we'll have five microfinance institutions in Tunisia by the end of the year, possibly. That is not small change. That is big change. That will affect tens of thousands of individuals out in the rural areas who have absolutely no possibility otherwise of accessing any kind of finance. And increasingly, we're not just providing finance. We're providing training, financial literacy, how to manage your business. The things that I was in DC foolishly, taking for granted are things that actually were out there in the region. That a young person could go and learn how to fill out an application to get a loan. Submit a business plan. No. And if this is true in Tunisia, could you imagine the situation in Morocco, Yemen, Egypt? Syria? Maybe you can say, talking about the informal sector, you know, there are, there is over $3 billion, I think. I'm correct me if I'm wrong. And in microfinance loans in the Arab world already, this is giving money to the unbankable, right? Am I right? Yes, absolutely. So $3 billion and over, I think, two or three million borrowers, 85% of them are women. And payback is 97, 98%. These are unbankable people. They come back, they pay back, and they are as bankable as any of the big businessmen in the Arab world. In fact, it's the big name lending that's created banking crisis in the Arab world, not microfinance. So they are out there. They are one or two person jobs, but they're actively engaged and they go out. I'm involved with one of the microfinance institutions and they are very dynamic people. We don't know that about the Arab world. I'm pretty sure you don't know that because you're only looking at the politics of it. But the women out there are going out and creating micro-businesses that is providing food for the family. And they don't want to be in the formal sector. They don't want to because they can't. When you borrow $300 and it's gonna cost you $1,000 to register a company, you're certainly not gonna register a company and certainly not pay taxes and they shouldn't be paying taxes. But you also said they want to scale, so... Why scale? I mean, the issue of scale is some, you can sell to your neighbor or if you wanna create a big business, you wanna sell to your neighboring country. But if you don't wanna sell to your neighboring country, at least allow them to sell to their neighbor. Okay. Scale is relative. I'm gonna take three very quick brief questions and then we'll let the panelists talk more. Thank you. Thank you very much. I'm Patricia Lange with Making Sense International and we're working with Silitec on helping rural youth become more bankable, employable and start their own businesses. I've just come back from Morocco and Tunisia and Tariq, I'm happy to report that there is reason to be encouraged about Tunisia. I went to Sidi Bouzid, which is where the revolution started. I met with an amazing NGO started by young people there. And what I heard from them is what they want is hope and encouragement and a little bit of cash. So the problem is it's very difficult for them to get the cash from USAID or any of the USA agencies. They don't know how to raise money from other governments or their own government. They want people to people type of connections. And I guess my question is, maybe it's a challenge for this audience is, how can we connect those young people with young people here on this campus in other cities and young people in cities of other countries as well? Because I think that that's where the change is gonna happen. So that's my question is, how can we do more youth to youth exchange for hope, encouragement and cash? Thank you, thank you. So, yeah, I said very quickly. Can we just take a couple? I wanna tell you about the program I have with GW. You will have the opportunity. No, I'm gonna let, two more questions, very brief. My name's Katie Paul. I'm from the Capital Archaeological Institute and we've actually been working on an MOU with the Egyptian government regarding the looting of antiquities and how it affects the tourism economy and the economy as a whole. And we've talked a lot about the informal sector and opening trade, but not much about the negative repercussions. And that is the illicit trade of antiquities, of weapons, the illicit movement of people and other objects, and how that could further destabilize the region without any sort of governance around those issues. And do you see a role for maybe the Arab League to create a more regional policy with regard to trade? Thank you. Arab League is the wrong place to even. Okay, that was a quick answer. Next, please. What's Arab League? Hi, Geoffrey King, National Endowment for Democracy. Could there be an alternative, I suppose? Quickly, Fadi, I'd like to hear more about your idea of specifically how a private sector and business can be more involved in education in the short run. Public education, private education, things like Khan Academy. And then more generally, how does local civil society fit into this? I mean, it sounds to me that in some ways, this model is a civil societyization of business. And is it in the long term more sustainable than the traditional model of civil society with donors and funding? Thank you. Very interesting, okay. Yes, Fadi, you want to start and look down the line. Just very quickly, so there is very small program that my company, Aramax, has with the Middle East Studies Program here at GW. I think you have some people that have gone used that program. Students go to the Arab world to study Arabic. And the program basically stipulates that if you want to study Arabic, you can do that, but you have to participate and volunteer in an NGO or with a social entrepreneur on the ground so that you actually feel what's happening in the region. And it's been, this is our third year, very successful. They tell me that the students here like it very much. Here's one of the graduates over there. So yeah, I mean, there is small, but there's plenty of nonprofits on the ground that would love to have volunteers come over and work there. They're all open. Chris, do you have? What's the other question? I forgot. There are so many other questions. Do you have a model of civil society? I'm gonna randomly answer. So the civil societization of the private sector, I think is related to also the earlier question about should we not just look at youth to solve problems and push youth to solve problems. A lot of people ask me, so my background is initially very civil society focused. And I often get asked the question, why are you bailing on civil society and going to the evil private sector and saying that everyone should start a business? And the answer to that is very simple. I think civil society is very bogged down by a lot of stigma and inability to bring in top talent and pay competitive salaries and go to scale quickly. And I think the private sector is a much more dynamic place. Is it more sustainable to have businesses adopt social challenges? I absolutely think it's more sustainable. Businesses are much quicker to go to scale. They're much more malleable. They're much more innovative. And it's a model that needs to be tested. And that's what we're doing in the Middle East. We're not waiting for anybody. We're going to test and see whether these social businesses can... We don't have time really to waste in the Middle East. We have to create jobs. We have to solve problems related to education, related to healthcare, related to employability. So we can't focus on entrepreneurship and ignore employability or delay that and just focus on that. We have to do everything at the same time. We just don't have the time to wait. There are so many pressing challenges and we have the largest youth bulge in the world right now. So I think social businesses have the potential to create jobs, to solve major challenges, and to be sustainable and scalable, which is something you won't find in civil society alone and you won't find in a traditional business model alone. And that's really what we're aiming and pushing to see and there are a lot of great examples of people doing this. And ahead of the curve supported by Silitec, supported by Aramex, supported by many different people is carrying out a study right now looking at trends in responsible business practice and social entrepreneurship. That will be launched in February 2014 and there are over 50 examples of amazing, viable, profitable businesses that are solving major challenges and take a look at that when that comes out. The other thing is related to mentorship and connecting youth here with youth in the Middle East or I think this issue of connectivity of youth here and youth in the Middle East and or mentors here with youth in the Middle East is very, very important. And how many of you have heard of Kiva? I'm sure almost everyone. How many of you know that there is something called Kiva Arab Youth? Probably not enough. So Silitec helped support Kiva Arab Youth Initiative and I think Tata is probably better to talk about this than me, but Kiva Arab Youth had 100,000 individuals give loans in the Middle East and this has led to the creation of micro ventures, the creation of jobs, the creation of income. And these loans are between 50 to $100. Very small amounts can really make a difference and that's a way for people here to connect with people there. Did I say that right, Tata? Actually, Kiva is an indictment of the CEO who runs the organization that sponsored that Kiva Arab World. The first time my own colleagues came to Munich and talked about crowd funding in the micro enterprise space. At the end of the meeting, immediately, I think five minutes into the discussion, I said, first of all, I have no idea what Kiva is to. I think this is pretty crazy. But we went down the path of experimenting with it. That's what social innovation is about. And the statistics that you've quoted, indeed not statistics, for the first year alone, I didn't think that you would find 100 people who would go online and give loans, let alone 100,000 individuals who would support the creation of 3,000, 4,000 enterprises in the span of one year. That is social innovation at work. There are a lot of things actually where you sit behind the desk. Some youngsters talking to you about some innovative idea, invariably using technology to scale up the idea. And you are completely bewildered. And half the time, my response is, I have no idea what you're talking about, but let us experiment with this. And just a quick example along the same lines. We launched an SMS-based service in Tunisia called Najihni recently. It's an SMS-based service to teach young people how to write a CV or maybe how to learn English. Everything about the program looked very dubious and undoable when it was first presented to management. Nonetheless, we decided to go ahead with it because we had a partner in the private sector and a partner in government that supported it. The first month's forecast for how many people would subscribe to this free service was, well, maybe you'll get 50,000 people if you're lucky in the first month. And I thought that was a crazy number. At the end of the first month in Tunisia, 365,000 youngsters subscribed to an SMS-based service that taught them very basic skills. I think that is what's interesting and what's promising about social innovation along the lines of what Dina suggested. We are discovering as we do this the potential for our very young people to become innovative, to become entrepreneurial and to bring about changes to solving real problems. And they will do it. And these are private citizens. And I think there are people who are thinking very seriously about how to connect private citizens here with private citizens in the Middle East. One of my closest friends, Tracy Aved, who is sitting right here, is putting together a program to connect girls here and girls in the Middle East. A very important initiative, using sports that will build up skills but will build up connections and that will use technology to do it all. And this is what Chris's book is all about. Put technology in the hands of young people and see what will happen. Okay, we'll take another round of questions. Hi, my name's Sasha Romad. I'm a MA in Arab Studies student at Georgetown. So we've been, thank you very much for a really great discussion. So we've been talking very broadly about entrepreneurship but I feel like on the one hand, you have the very micro entrepreneurs. And then on the other hand, you have entrepreneurs who have maybe gone to universities overseas or graduates from AUC, AUB. And it feels, it's just very broad. So I was just wondering, who do you think about and who are you talking about when you're discussing entrepreneurship and how do you address both groups? And are they, do you kind of, do you really distinguish between both? One more question and then we can answer. Hi, my name is Mary, I'm Jam Shidi. I'm the founder of a digital magazine on the Middle East called Muftah. And I recently wrote a book on the region as well on civic entrepreneurship in the region that is a nice compliment to Chris's book. My question kind of relates to the question that came before me as well as the question on civil society, as well as the question on informal markets. So there are a couple of gaps in the sort of entrepreneurship paradigm that have been identified. One is the informal entrepreneurs. The other one that I'm really concerned about and wrote about in my book are entrepreneurs who are working in the civic spaces but aren't necessarily bringing in an income stream. So you have organizations like in Syrian organization called Suriyali which is a Syrian internet radio station that is about developing a sense of civic responsibility amongst Syrians. They think of themselves as a startup but they don't really have an income stream outside of donations. So my question is, how do we think about those entrepreneurs who aren't necessarily going after the sort of small businesses or startups in a traditional sense? How do we incorporate them into this definition of entrepreneurship and should we incorporate them in this definition of entrepreneurship? Great, great questions, Fadi. So most of the entrepreneurs in the region are not graduates of AUB or AUC, I mean, or American universities. If you read Chris's book and you should read it, you'll find tens and tens of stories of people who graduate from universities that you've never heard of. Princess Somaya University in Jordan which is a technology university, graduates 400, 500 people a year, each get about an average of four job offers, four job offers per graduate. So the question is, why do these people get four jobs offers and are fully employed and are, if you go to tech companies in the GCC countries, you will find a lot of their techies are graduates of this university and other technical universities in the region because they're teaching them the skills that the market requires. It's a very simple formula. And have you heard of something called Code Academy? So Code Academy is based on the technology that was built by a young Jordanian graduate of Princess Somaya University. He was nearly a dropout, took him six, seven years because he hated going to school. Mjad Masad and Mjad was this, was a rebel, a hacker, a troublemaker and they hated him at the university most of the time. His parents were always visiting the school because they're complaining about him and then because he's a rebel, he engages in open source software development and stuff like that. So he was publishing his coding and his new discovery in how to program over the web browser, simple programming process. He discovered that as he was publishing on open source that this company in New York, Code Academy was actually using his coding and his capabilities to build their startup. And then he kept every time and then he was amazed. I mean, he didn't want anything in return. He said, look, these guys, these famous guys who have raised millions of dollars and Mayor Bloomberg is in love with them and talks about them are actually based on a guy that is a graduate of a Jordanian university. Eventually they brought him over and he became the chief software and chief technology officer at the organization and now he's a big guy at Facebook. But he's a graduate of the Princess Somaya University in Jordan. You've never heard of it, but these are the people that are going out and there are many people like him, by the way. We don't see them. There is plenty of techies that work in these big companies. The number three or number four guy at Twitter today is a Jordanian. You didn't know that, but he's hiding and doing things that he's doing. And so they're out there. We read Chris's book. You will find a lot of these incredible stories. Or read for these last article on LinkedIn. I wrote an article on Amjad Masaad. You should read it, yes. I'm just going to make a point about that last question because I personally, and again this may be controversial, this term social entrepreneurship I think has become quite loaded. And I personally have chosen to eliminate nonprofit organizations from social enterprises. For me a social enterprise has to be profit making. Has to be a business with a social impact. And I think they're very great, innovative, creative, amazing nonprofits out there that are supported by Ashoka, by Cinergos, and I do not at all discredit them. But I think a part of the entrepreneurial spirit is really about systemic change that is scalable and that is profitable and that can create jobs and that can be expanded and that can eventually be sold to a much bigger player and make millions and there's nothing wrong with that. So this is my own personal view on this. Other people have other views, but that would be my... But all businesses have come out to solve a problem or fill a gap and so we shouldn't, I mean, yes it has to have social impact but that's not socialist either. It's just how you view things. So you make profit while you solve a problem and that's the best combination that you can have out there. Chris, you wanna, we're at closing time so Chris, I'm gonna let you say something in this line of discussion and then Tarek, you'll close. I mean, I'd rather just sit and listen to these guys, frankly, which is because that's where the action really is. I just, go back and watch the Twits tweets, the Twitter on this, if you haven't been doing it already on your mobile device because there's a lot of just amazing insight coming from around the world during this conference of that's unbelievably hopeful and very optimistic in confirming many of the things that people here are saying overall. I would just say in closing, particularly to the American young people here and it's very revealing even in some of your questions. The next five years is not gonna be like the last five years and I don't mean that in an obvious that life always changes in the future. What I mean is that the nature of the way people are solving problems and what they have in their hands to do it is unlike anything that's ever happened in the world ever before and if you're doing anything in your university studies or in your think tanks or as journalists or in your businesses that aren't thinking about that first and foremost, you're gonna miss I think one of the most important opportunities of mutual engagement that we've ever seen in our lives. And I would encourage you, particularly the young people here, to find a way to go. Just find a way to go or find a way to build some kind of connection among the young people in the book or these folks can help you do it overall because people are just dying to do that and you can hack the system, you can go around all the regulatory and pay-in-the-ash things we've talked about before just by simply doing. And that's where I would leave you. Thanks. But for you in closing remarks, I think can I say something before I thought it, Laila? I just wanted to take the opportunity to also thank Laila and the New America Foundation because this topic is not a topic that's discussed in this city and I think this panel is a very rare occasion. So I think I really wanna also take the opportunity to thank New America Foundation for allowing this topic to be written about and to also bringing in this exceptional group of people to sit and talk to everyone about it. Thank you. Thank you, Dina. This was a silly tag that you were largely behind this initiative, thanks to GW. The panelists have really inspired us, inspired me, I'm sure you. And they have kindly agreed to hang around for a few minutes after. If you have questions, you can feel free to approach. Chris is available also to sign his book. Again, all the proceeds go to Ruad and. The book is free. And the book is free. Take one and leave, nothing's free in Washington. Take one and leave. You don't need my signature, just read it. Thank you all for very engaging questions. Round of applause. Thank you.