The Need to Empower Lives | Kim Lim | TEDxINTISubang
Kim, a musician and co-founder of the social enterprise The Feature Project, argues that experiential community action, like sharing meals cooked by refugees, is more powerful than simply stating alarming statistics about global refugee crises. She powerfully illustrates this by detailing how The Feature Project empowers eight refugee families—such as the mother 'Canoe' and Ali's mother—to achieve financial stability and psychological recovery through catering services. The central message is that collective, shared human connection is the necessary catalyst for sustainable global change. ## Speakers & Context - **Kim:** Musician, fingerstyle guitarist, singer-songwriter, composer, and co-founder of Handsome Hope and The Feature Project. - Kim's primary focus today is introducing The Feature Project and her journey with it, while initially needing to define what a refugee is. ## Theses & Positions - The core purpose of The Feature Project is to integrate refugees into the economy by establishing them as paid service providers, specifically through catering and delivery services. - The deepest impact of The Feature Project is not just providing a sustainable living, but actively improving the psychological well-being of the refugees, as seen with Ali's mother who started speaking again. - True societal change does not require large, visible structural fixes, but rather small, collective acts of shared humanity—such as sharing a meal with someone from a different sub-community. - The organization operates on the principle of collective action: *"we don't believe in doing things alone we believe in changing the world together collectively."* ## Concepts & Definitions - **Refugee:** People who must flee their homeland due to war, persecution, or political conflicts; they *choose* to leave but are forced to seek safety elsewhere. - **Resettlement:** The process by which refugees are accepted into a new country, granting better access to education, healthcare, and income. - **The Feature Project:** A catering and delivery service that exclusively utilizes refugees as cooks and providers. - **Beneficiaries/Suppliers:** Kim explicitly rejects using these terms for the refugee families, instead preferring to refer to them as *"our family."* ## Mechanisms & Processes - **Funding Education:** Initially, Kim utilized her music skills by organizing and conducting fundraising concerts to support students dropping out of school. - **Identifying the Need:** Upon visiting students, the team discovered the root cause of school dropout was severe financial hardship, forcing kids to work to support families of five to ten. - **Skill Mapping & Platform Creation:** Observing the high resilience and culinary skill of the community (even a 10-year-old could cook for five to ten), they created The Feature Project to monetize these existing skills. - **Operationalization:** Families provide meals via catering/delivery; each box includes a story detailing the family's origin, journey, and struggles, connecting the purchase to empowerment. ## Timeline & Sequence - **Three years ago:** Kim and co-founders started Handsome Hope, volunteering to provide education assistance to underserved communities. - **Last year:** The initiative faced concern over children dropping out of school, prompting home visitations. - **Present:** Establishment and growth of The Feature Project, which currently supports eight refugee families. ## Named Entities - **Handsome Hope:** The initial volunteering platform co-founded by Kim. - **The Feature Project:** The current social enterprise focusing on catering and delivery. - **Canoe:** A refugee family member who was the first 'hope' for the project; her family is from Afghanistan. - **Ali:** A family member from Syria; previously worked as a compliance officer in the West Unit in Syria. ## Numbers & Data - **65 million:** Estimated number of refugees worldwide. - **5%:** Percentage of refugees who successfully resettle. - **95%:** Percentage of refugees who remain in precarious situations. - **150,000:** Number of registered refugees in Malaysia (the context country). - **8:** Number of refugee families currently supported by The Feature Project. - **Five to ten:** Estimated size of a family that might force children to quit school. - **20 to 30:** Initial number of people who attended a meeting where Canoe was encouraged. - **20:** Number of initial packs Canoe cooked for friends. - **40 to 50:** Number of packs Canoe later cooked. - **200:** Current capacity of packets per meal per time for Canoe. ## Examples & Cases - **Canoe Family Story:** Canoe was initially skeptical because she felt nothing cooked by the poor could be promoted publicly. After positive feedback from 20-30 friends, her confidence grew, allowing her to increase production capacity to 200 packets. - **Ali's Family Story:** Ali's father was a highly skilled architect in Syria but found his skills unrecognized in Malaysia, leading to trauma, which caused him to lose his voice. The support from The Feature Project allowed his mother to cook, which helped restore the psychological well-being of the whole family. - **Food Showcase:** Examples of cuisine include: *Palani* (from Afghanistan), *chicken biryani* (from Syria), and *chicken Mandy* (from Gaza). ## Tools, Tech & Products - **Catering and delivery service:** The core business model of The Feature Project. - **Mealbox with story:** The physical product that accompanies the food, educating the buyer about the specific family, their journey, and their struggles. ## References Cited - **UN Refugee Convention (1950/1951):** The international agreement framework for refugees. ## Trade-offs & Alternatives - **Legal Status:** The greatest structural impediment is that Malaysia is not a UN Refugee Convention signatory, meaning the 150,000 registered refugees have no legal right to work, education, or secure shelter. - **Economic Limitation:** Refugees are forced into manual labor (waiter, dishwashing) because their professional qualifications are not recognized. ## Counterarguments & Caveats - The speech is predicated on the assumption that the listener is not already familiar with the core concepts of refugee status or the structure of the problem. ## Conclusions & Recommendations - The speaker concludes by challenging the audience, suggesting that any person living above the poverty line in Malaysia could make a difference through simple acts like sharing a meal or providing food to someone in a different community. - The ultimate goal is changing the world through collective, shared experience rather than isolation. ## Implications & Consequences - The success of The Feature Project demonstrates that market-based micro-support can directly contribute to the psycho-social recovery (e.g., restoring a father’s voice) of displaced individuals. - The model shifts the narrative from "aid recipient" to "economic participant." ## Verbatim Moments - *"The picture project is mainly I'm going to introduce to what I do in the future project today and my future journey."* - *"These are people that have to flee from their current country their homeland because war persecution or political conflicts are happening back in the country so it's not safe for them to remain."* - *"we can now form the third largest country in the world by selling only 5% gets to resettle"* - *"we don't call them beneficiaries we don't call them suppliers there's one time our intern came in and he asks us so these suppliers and go like no don't call them suppliers they are our family"* - *"the feedback was very positive so we convey these positiveness to renew and she gained more confidence through there"* - *"it's the field that keeps driving us to do what we are doing today"* - *"we don't believe in doing things alone we believe in changing the world together collectively"*