 Hello everyone and thank you for joining us and welcome to the Sustainability Pioneer Series. We are so fortunate to be here with two of the Schwab Foundation's social entrepreneurs, two people, Sasha Chanov and Amy Slaughter, who are innovating, as you know, to make an impact on disrupting urban refugee response. And we're lucky that Amy and Sasha are part of the Schwab Foundation's larger network of social entrepreneurs, people who are working around the world daily to make a difference, to make the world a more just, sustainable and better place to live. Through the Schwab Foundation, Sasha and Amy are part of a group that has reached at least 190 countries and social entrepreneurs like Sasha and Amy have had an impact on over 622 million people's lives. So it's going to be very exciting to hear from Sasha and Amy about the work that they're doing. I wanted to first talk quickly about how this 30-minute session will flow. We are first going to start with a Slido in just a minute. From there, I will then briefly introduce our two social entrepreneurs, our social innovators, and ask them an opening question. So if I may, I will ask if we can pull up the Slido, and this is a way for all of us to think about and get our minds around this issue of disrupting and thinking about how we assist refugees. The question, can you all see the question? I think it's still coming up the Slido question. Yes. So if you all can scan and answer this question, put yourself in the shoes of a refugee and the things that you would need or want. That's great. Look at that safety, stability, dignity. So many things that we take for granted ourselves sound so easy, which is so hard in these lives. The ability to plan for the future, a job, and a pathway to employment. I think that Sasha and Amy are going to have a lot to tell us about this. So just, I think, looking at this screen, Sasha and Amy, really think about these things. I know food and education become so important, but this issue around finances, access to legal counsel. Great. I think everyone has their head in this game for sure. So Sasha and Amy, as I promised, I'm going to ask an opening question, but let me just introduce you each for 30 seconds. And then Sasha, when I ask the question, please take three minutes to answer it. And then Amy, do you take three minutes to answer the same question? So all of you saw Sasha's background. I just wanted to say a reminder of Sasha being the founder and the executive director of Refuge Point, also being a compelling author. And maybe we'll hear more about that. I found it compelling to think about how you find your moral compass out of difficult decision-making points. And then anyone who I ask about Sasha, he is someone who is always willing and able to talk to anyone anywhere about the types of things we can do to really disrupt what's happening in refugee assistance and make it stronger and better. So that's Sasha. Amy, who we'll hear from shortly, serves Refuge Points as the senior advisor. She is bringing to that position and to this session over 25 years of experience, working with refugees from every perspective and angle, NGOs, the United Nations, governments. And she takes that visceral knowledge and experience and has turned it into practical tools like what we hope we'll hear from you a little bit, Amy, at the Self-Reliance Initiative. So those are our two speakers. Sasha, I'm going to have you come on screen and ask you the first question. And Amy, you get ready right behind him. So the first question is, could you tell us about your journey as a social entrepreneur and innovator? And what drove you to this field of assisting and, frankly, what you talk about disrupting refugee response and assistance? Thank you, Cynthia. It's such a pleasure to be here with you and with my colleague, Amy, and with the Schwab Foundation and our colleagues, they are here at the World Economic Forum focused on this critical and urgent issue today about refugees in the world and how we can respond most effectively. When I think about your question, I've been reading and looking at the evacuations from Afghanistan right now, the urgent and life-threatening situation, and how the U.S. military and the people on the ground have been put in positions to make impossible choices about who to let on to those evacuations and who to keep off. And it's reminded me of my own experience over 20 years ago now with another U.S. evacuation. This was in the Congo when the U.S. government contracted the U.N. agency I was with at the time to evacuate people from the Congo who were being attacked and killed. And we, my colleague and I, were part of the last mission into the Congo. And we were given a list of 112 people to take out and told that under no circumstances could we include anybody else because Congo was at war. We had to get armed guards to get people from the safe haven where they were to the airport. So stick to the list and we would succeed otherwise if we might not. When we arrived in that safe haven, we found 32 widows and orphans who were not on our list. And we knew that if they were left there, they would likely perish. But if we tried to take them, we were jeopardizing the lives of all the people on our list. And we'd been given explicit instructions not to take anybody else. And it was really an impossible choice. My colleague who was a senior operations official, Shaka Ali, who was with me, finally convinced me that we had to try. And we went against our orders and did. And we managed to get those people out. It was a harrowing situation, one of the most intense experiences of my own life. But what it led to for me was that it opened my eyes to people who were overlooked and forgotten. And as I worked across the African continent with various UN agencies, I just saw acute needs that were going unaddressed. And that in large part led to the founding of Refuge Point to find solutions for people in the most life-threatening situations. And I think one insight that we've had at Refuge Point is that broadly, the humanitarian response paradigm today for the 80 plus million people who've been displaced by conflict, approximately 1% of humanity, is no longer fit for purpose. Because the idea that has been there since World War II is that people flee their homes, they go to a camp, they receive tent, food, basic aid, until they can go home. But that's just not relevant for the context of today's crises because people don't go home anymore. On average, you see people stay in refugee situations for more than 20 years. And some people are born into exile. So we have to think of new ways to respond to this urgent and growing crisis in front of us. And that's what Refuge Point is about. Oh, thank you, Sasha. That is a chilling story. What an amazing experience. And thank goodness that you and Sheikha Ali were there disobeying orders, frankly. Wow. Amazing. Amy, so good to have you on screen. And just to remind everyone of the question, tell us about your journey as a social entrepreneur, social innovator, and what has led you here working to assist refugees? Sure. Thanks for the question. Thanks for having us today and organizing this panel on such an important topic. In terms of my personal journey, it was a bit of a fluke of geography. I was living and working in Eastern Europe when the war broke out in former Yugoslavia in the mid 90s. And I was just really drawn to finding a way to help, even though I was young and inexperienced at the time. But I was lucky enough to get hired on by IOM to help with resettlement processing for Bosnian refugees coming to the US. And so I've been in the refugee field ever since. I've worked extensively overseas on the sending side of resettlement and then also in the US on the receiving side of resettlement. And so I had done that for about 15 years before joining Refuge Point. And I had worked for a lot of different organizations. But what stood out to me is they were all ultimately funded by the US State Department, which is the largest funder of refugee assistance in the world. And so I realized that there's not a lot of room for innovation in government contracts. And I was really drawn to the opportunity that Refuge Point provided to use private funding to identify the needs on the ground and to design programs to address them as we see fit. And also in that experience overseas, although I was working with refugees being resettled, what I was really seeing is the vast numbers that were not being resettled and that did not have any durable solution at all. And to share some most recent statistics from 2020, less than 2% of refugees in the world found any durable solution. So that includes those that were resettled, those that repatriated, and the very few that are allowed to legally, locally integrate in their host countries. So it's not a niche population that we're talking about. It's 98% of refugees that really are just stuck in these long-term limbo situations with no solutions at all. And so that really is what Refuge Point focuses on. Thank you for sharing that, Amy. But these are very disturbing numbers to think about 2% of the 80 plus million that Sasha mentioned, as you're saying, 1% of humanity that then has no answer. Years ago, my career started with Mozambican refugees. And that's exactly what happened. It was a long wait, but they finally went home. They repatriated. But that's not the trend, as you're saying. I just want to open it up now to everyone and would ask people to put in to the chat questions, comments, ideas, reactions. We'll try to capture as many of them as we can and bring them to your attention. Sasha and Amy, we know you can't do both looking at us and the screen. So we're at the chat. So we'll pull some out for you. We can try. Yeah, you try. I'm trying to do some myself. But I think I might start with this point that both of you have made. And Amy, you had talked about having this approach, an innovative approach, and this issue of self-reliance and this self-reliance initiative. So maybe Amy, I'll start with you. But Sasha, this is something that I might ask you to also come in on because it's broadly around refuge point. But it's quite compelling when you say we're just not fit for purpose for taking care of such a proportion of humanity. But Amy, maybe you on this self-reliance initiative. And what is it that you all are doing your approach at refuge point? Sure. Yeah. So another thing that's important to know is that fewer than 40% of refugees in the world live in camps and rural settlements. Over 60% are actually in urban areas. And the humanitarian response paradigm just hasn't caught up to that trend of urbanization and that new reality. So most of these urban refugees are, sorry, I have a call. I have to silence. Most of these urban refugees are trying to exist on their own with very little or no assistance at all. And that's what we found in Nairobi, where we establish our flagship office to serve the most vulnerable urban refugees that we identify there. And we see that they really aren't receiving assistance from anyone else. The budgets and the resources and attention are all still going to the camps. So this is something that really needs to change. But what we're working on in Nairobi is we developed a very full service holistic model that addresses basically all of the basic needs that refugees have and helps them stabilize. And then then we can work with them towards reestablishing their livelihoods so they can reclaim control of their finances and futures and get back on their feet. So that's our model in Nairobi. Perhaps Sasha would like to say more about that. Yeah, that would be interesting. And Sasha, I'd love to have you come in on that. And also what makes refuge point so different from the assistance that's been given in the past, as you noted, I keep picking up on this, we're just not fit for purpose, but maybe from those other entities. What's different with refuge point and your approach that Amy's talked about? Well, Cynthia, it's really fun to be here with you because you have been a leader of innovation at UNICEF. And I think one of the things that distinguishes refuge point is actually that we don't apply for government contracts or UN refugee agency contracts, which is how the vast majority of our field operates. We actually raise independent funding to identify issues that we feel are of critical importance and that we can help to advance. When we started this conversation, many people responded to that first question. If you're putting yourself in the shoes of a refugees, what are you thinking? And the answers were really resonated with me, security, stability, purpose, dignity, belonging, work, access to food and housing. Those are things that we heard firsthand from refugees in Nairobi. In fact, this was really started alongside and with refugees and with Kenyan counterparts as well. So as we heard those things, we started raising private funds to create a program that would help people get from point A, very vulnerable, to point B, a place where they're supporting themselves more independent. As we started measuring our impact and finding that we had success in our endeavors, we looked more broadly around the world to see who else was focused on this. And we found a lot of willing partners who were really eager to figure out how to advance self-reliance for refugees, but also we found a huge gap. The partnerships in the field, people were saying, we don't know how to measure the impact of our programming. I remember one person saying, this would be the holy grail of humanitarian response if we could figure out how to measure the impact of programming that moves people towards self-reliance. So along with many partners, including the Women's Refugee Commission, which has been a co-lead with us in building the refugee self-reliance initiative, we launched a global platform to advance self-reliance for refugees. And one of our first efforts was to actually build a tool that would measure the impact of self-reliance. That tool was built over three years with input from over 27 partners, including governments and leading foundations and refugees themselves. And now it's very active. We are training other organizations to use this tool, and we are starting to build an evidence base of what's working. Amy, do you have those stats on where we are with that tool and whom we're reaching? Yeah, well, we know that about 21 agencies in 14 different countries have already adopted the tool and are using it. And so they're already using it to screen and assess thousands. I can't remember what we're up to now, but maybe up to 10,000 households around the world. And this is an ever-expanding list. There's just been a great surge of enthusiasm, and the tool has been really well received by the field. I think folks have recognized that this has been a gap, that there has been no way to measure this. There are a lot of tools that are very sector-specific and do a deep dive into help their nutrition or something like that. But this is really the first tool that gives an overview of how a family is doing across all of the different parameters, because as we know, we don't live our lives in silos, and so we get a bit of information about every aspect of refugees' lives, and it provides a very useful high-level view that you can use to tailor interventions to specific families and to aid in program design and monitoring. And I would just add to what Amy said that we're also seeing the governments are starting to use this. The State Department in their notification of funding opportunities has highlighted this tool. So has the Ikea Foundation is incorporating it into some of their funding, and other foundations are starting to use it as well. So we see that this is an opportunity to help transform the humanitarian response landscape toward one that is based in measurement and what's really working so that we can expand those opportunities for more and more people. And just to put a finer point on that, you know, Refuge Point does two things. One is to help people in life-threatening jeopardy relocate to countries where they can rebuild their lives, and with those evacuations that I mentioned at the start, that's part of what we do. We help people relocate to the US, and there's a very visible and immediate impact when you see someone move from danger to security. But we're seeing the same kind of impact with the self-reliance programming. But it takes a little longer, a couple of years, but you see people in positions of extraordinary vulnerability really moving into positions where they're in charge of their own lives and their own future is much more. And you see that in how people look and how people interact with you. So it's, you know, we're really gratified to see some of the progress that we're making. Yeah, no, and what an amazing impact to be able to see people be able to have control of their lives. So well done and thank you for that work. I feel in the chat, you all may have seen it, but Susan, I'm so glad you asked it. I don't, I didn't, you may, some of you may have noted that I work for the United Nations Children's Fund. So Susan's question is, are you aware of any innovative approach to finding durable solutions for refugee children whose needs are so profound? And when we talk about vulnerable populations, a refugee child may be top of that list. So I don't know, Sasha, would you want to try to take a cut at this and just how Refuge Point has those solutions for children? If I had a lot of time, I would share the really detailed story of how we have really centered a lot of our work around children. But just to say that that is one of the centerpieces of our work. In particular, we work a lot with unaccompanied children. And we have created an effort in collaboration with the UN Refugee Agency to do best interest determinations and assessments for unaccompanied children to ensure that their futures are as secure as possible, and also to reunite them with families. We have a big effort with staff across Africa and the Middle East, resettling refugees to countries where they can rebuild their lives. And unaccompanied children are a really important dimension of that. In addition to that, we, in collaboration with the UN Refugee Agency and the International Refugee Assistance Project, are piloting and have built a program to connect unaccompanied children with parents in anchor countries so that we can reunite those children with parents. So we've been building that program to a lot of success and are poised to build it even more right now. That's great. Thank you for that. Another question that's come up in the chat is how you all work with other organizations. Talent Without Boundaries has an innovative approach for creating pathways to employment for refugees. So Amy, I might ask you, Sasha, you did talk about working with private sector, very different. But Amy, how do you all share information with solutions, comparing notes? Yeah, it's a great question. It's a big priority for us. We are very intent on collaborating with other operational partners and sharing knowledge and learning and really, you know, it only improves the field at large if we all share what we know and share resources. So we hold a lot of convenings and we're, yeah, very intent on doing that. Talent Beyond Boundaries is one that we work with closely. We know them well and we actually have a program that's rather similar to what they do. We also have an economic mobility pathway where we identify highly skilled refugees in Kenya for pathways to Canada on labor visas. So yes, I'm very familiar with that model. And yeah, there are a lot of other great innovative actors out there like Talent Beyond Boundaries. Could I just add? Yeah, no, I wanted to add when you asked how we work with partners, one of the approaches that we have taken, and I think this is where we have such resonance and synergy with the Schwab Foundation is that we want to help and support and empower other organizations to do their best work. Because I find that competition in our field really both limits collaboration and limits your best work for refugees themselves. And if we are really for refugees first and foremost, then we should be supporting all the organizations that are so important in terms of supporting refugees. So at Refuge Point, we do a lot from our development department to individually to support other organizations, to introduce them to funders, to help guide them in terms of how they can make the most impact. Talent Beyond Boundaries is a great example of that. We were there when they were founded. We helped to introduce them to funders and we're so pleased at the extraordinary success they've had. But we take that approach with all the organizations that come into our orbit, and we've found that that's reciprocal. And particularly in the Schwab Foundation network, we've found other organizations like Refunite and others that are just as supportive of us and want to take time to help us. So I find when you can build that kind of collaborative synergy, you can start to move the needle on issues that no organization can do individually. Thank you for that point. That's a key point that you're right. The Schwab Foundation is helping people to do more and more of that collaborative approach and learning from each other. I want to jump to this question about Afghanistan. For one main reason is that we're all watching this unfold. And that there's an example of we're seeing it today, but this is a 40-year refugee crisis with, I think in some cases, the third generation being born into a refugee life. But what is Refuge Point able to do to help Afghanistan's refugees? Maybe Sasha, start with you. Sure. Well, Refuge Point has been working with Afghan refugees for many, many years now. We have staff in a number of different countries working with unaccompanied children from Afghanistan helping to reunite them with families. I was just on a call with one of our staff telling me about two unaccompanied minors that have lost their family, their parents, and we're helping to reunite them with an aunt in a country of safety. So we are working urgently on this issue before the US evacuated and the Taliban took over. Now, this is the crisis of our lifetime in terms of the US and a historic moment in the US that we have to respond to. What Refuge Point is doing is we're working on a number of fronts. First, we're increasing the capacity to respond to those people who've already been displaced because, as you mentioned, Afghans have been displaced for 40 years. Second, we are looking at where the needs are greatest in terms of countries where people are fleeing to and we are looking at potentially creating a pilot programs to help additional people who haven't yet been able to get to the US to get to countries of safety. And third, our self-reliance work is really critical in this respect because, again, if you think about 40 years of displacement you have to find new ways of supporting people and when you can do that from the perspective of enabling people to support themselves and carve out lives of dignity and self-reliance even in complicated situations and we found that we can at Refuge Point, that will help provide stability and is really necessary as we think about the broad scope of Afghan displacement right now. Wow. Thank you. That's wonderful to hear the direct impact and immediate impact that you're having for Afghanistan's refugees but also that longer-term planning and thinking. We only have two minutes left so I wanted to ask each of you. I'll start with Amy and then Sasha. Amy, what keeps you up at night? You have a network of people listening who care about this issue. You want to learn more about it but what's the thing that you'd want us to remember and when you wake up in the middle of the night know that we're helping you think about it? It's a great question. Thanks. I think with the Afghan outflows the scale of it is definitely very daunting. It's on a scale that we are not normally dealing with in the refugee community and this follows four years of famine in terms of conservative governments, you know, scaling back the capacity of resettlement programs so it's a very tough position to try to build back the program during in the midst of this really enormous crisis so that's very daunting but it also worries me that while all the attention and resources are going to this latest crisis of Afghanistan, there's still the 26 million refugees that existed before August 15th and that inevitably resources and attention will be pulled away from them and so it's really something about how to balance this and that the system just really needs to find a way to do both at the same time to do emergency response but to also not forget the protracted populations to keep our eyes you know where the media might not have its camera pointed so it's it's those refugees that aren't on the TV screens that keep me up at night. Yes, thank you. So Sasha, same question to you maybe this point keeping you up at night what's happening off camera that we may not be seeing that you see. Cynthia, I think Amy put it so well I would just add to that that refugees themselves need to be the solvers of their own challenges. We need to figure out the most effective ways to do that. We're finding that a lot of people are thinking similarly and that's starting to happen from bringing refugees and people with lived experience onto our boards putting them in leadership positions in organizations and ensuring that their voices and their ideas and their actions are at the center point of how we respond to these crises moving forward. Great, thank you both so much. I cannot believe that went so fast and I want to thank everyone for joining us. There were questions and comments we didn't get to but I do know that both Amy and Sasha welcome your coming to Refuge Points website taking a look at the Self-Reliance RefugeeselfReliance.org website a second website to understand more and to collaborate. I would leave us with two things you've clearly said you're working and we can all work to empower people and to collaborate and share information so thank you for your work with Refuge Point and for sharing your stories with us. Thank you everyone for joining. There's more so keep looking for some of the other series there's something coming up on mental health sustainable fashion so please we hope to see you on those chats in those series.