Transcript

Lightening the Load: The Power of Human Connection | Gia Farooqi | TEDxRutgers

[Applause] every minute 24 people around the world become refugees by the time I end this talk with all of you today 300 people will have joined the world's worst humanitarian crisis around this time last year I was reading headlines about the refugee crisis I was engaged in rhetoric by our then-presidential elects as they discussed immigration reform and what it meant to be a refugee in America and I quickly discovered that the fate of millions of people was being determined by a select few I saw pictures of children being washed up on shore and I learned that 13 migrants died a day trying to cross bodies of water in order to escape war in poverty as a 21 year old business student I felt frustrated more importantly I felt useless I didn't know how to engage with this global community in this global issue it didn't feel like it was enough to share a facebook status or engage in conversations or find some money to donate and I think that's a feeling that we all collectively feel often as we discover more and more awful things in the news and were engaged in conversations of something that's occurring every single day that's what the power of the Internet has done so for me I kept thinking about this other 21 year old girl in Syria one who probably had the same dreams as I did the same ambitions as I did the same work ethic the same talent if not more and I thought about what made us different and I couldn't come up with anything except the fact that I was lucky and she wasn't and that just seemed so fair that there was no equity when it came to luck but then I came across something that could only be described as an open door because doors lead to opportunity and that door was called the whole prize the Hult prize is a global challenge that asked students to create for-profit business model to solve the world's biggest problems and this year's challenge was to restore the dignity of 1 million refugees by the year 2022 through a sustainable business model the Hope prize pushed students to engage in social entrepreneurship and as the CEO of the organization Ahmed oscura often likes to say it's a way in a field to do good and also do well and the most exciting part was that the winner would win a million dollars in investment money now I didn't think I was going to win but I thought that this was an exciting way to finally create action to do something to engage with a global community in a way that was beyond just social media I was excited to maybe be a part of an opportunity where I could be given taking any look that was given to me and helped make sure that it was given to someone else so that they could create value as well so that there was a domino ripple effect and that was what was exciting about the whole prize plus it would be pretty cool if I could say I won a million dollars about a year later I found myself and with my incredible team on the stage at the United Nations as one of six global finalists pitching our transportation solution roshni rides that day on September 16th we were awarded 1 million dollars by President Bill Clinton for our transportation solution it was an [Applause] but to get from that 21 year old who is frustrated by the way the world worked to a part of being part of a million dollar team was not a journey without its struggles and that's what I want to talk to you about today I learned a very important lesson in human connectivity and the way that that empowers people not only in a team setting and ours a social entrepreneur but us us as global citizens and how we can engage in empathy and human connection to create a better world I started this whole prize journey with three of some very important people to me although when I first met them I didn't feel that way about them at the time hana hudson oneof and I actually met three years ago in a financial management class when I obnoxiously asked them if they wanted to do a case study competition with me because I didn't have any other friends in the class who I thought would say yes and that was the first time we really worked together as a team we discovered two things very very quickly the first was that we were all very competitive people and the second was that we really liked to win so we decided to our do our first competition and we were able to win and then we engaged in another that year after and then the third year was when we really discussed this conversation about the whole prize but when we read about the whole prize and wanted to engage in it we learned some things and that made them different from the case studies we had done before first it was bigger than anything we had ever entered it was a hundred thousand applicant pool to be exact we were not even a drop in the bucket and second it was something that was so much bigger than us and it was a problem that we really cared about these were people who felt like extended family to us you know all four of us are children of immigrants some of us our grandchildren of refugees and it was a problem that we saw reflected in our own communities we felt so connected to the refugees around the world who were struggling they felt like family to us even if we didn't know them and so that's what made the whole prize so important and so as I began to work on the whole prize with this team of incredible individuals I learned something very quickly but it's easy to want to go out and save the world and help these other people and be empathetic and sympathetic to their causes but it doesn't work if you're not paying attention to your first inner circle first we all learn about teamwork from preschool when you're trying to figure out what blocks to share or to the college level when you're trying to figure out if you're gonna be the student that does all the work or not and engage on group mean messages teamwork is something is a skill set that we all learn but what we don't understand is how to identify human connectivity while you're working as a team and if you really want to put your empathy and human connectivity skills to the test get a group of your closest friends and try starting a business with them and tell me what happens so what I realized was that this was my time to identify what that meant to me human connectivity is a step beyond empathy we all have some kind of natural empathetic instincts that was why I felt there was so much injustice in the world and I connected to this girl in Syria that was empathy but to really walk a mile on someone else's shoes to be ready to catch them before they even fall that's what human connection is about and that's what I learned from these three people and that's how I identified that was that was the first time I was able to identify what human connection meant and empathy it's not something that's just natural is what I learned it's a skill that requires practice and I can tell you I had a lot of time to practice over the last year and I'm still learning but I didn't realize what the impact of human connection and empathy is until much later for us we realized that we wanted to create a solution that connected refugees to resources and it started with our own homes in Pakistan where our parents were from we wanted to really analyze the pain points there we saw that there was 40 million urbanized refugees in Pakistan which was the largest host country to refugees in Asia and it was shocking that there wasn't a lot of work being done there so that's where we wanted to start we came up with a solution called roshni rides and for us we wanted to connect the refugees we were engaging with in Pakistan to resources that they couldn't access before opportunities that they couldn't access before what do you think of the refugee crisis most people think that this hardest part the most terrifying part is the actual fleeing which it is but we often forget about the much longer struggle that comes after that limbo in between transit and resettlement a lot of refugees come into camps or informal settlements thinking that they're only going to be there for a couple months but on average they end up staying there for five years or longer they have to make a home out of something that has never felt like home and it's difficult because their opportunities for survival are taken away there's no infrastructure development for them to create upward social mobility for them to create any kinds of self-sufficiency that's why we thought transportation was such an important solution to invest in it was a way to develop infrastructure and bring these refugees to the resources they needed so that they could help themselves our motto or the word roshni means light in or do which is the main language to use in Pakistan light means many things to a lot of us it's hope joy it's happiness but for us it was really about lightning pun totally intended the burdens of our customers and how we could in ways that were both big and small that's why our motto is to create brighter lives one ride at a time we decided to pilot in a small city called Rangi or slum called the ronke town Pakistan which is home to about 2.5 million urbanized refugees and while we were there I learned some of the biggest lessons in my social entrepreneurship journey we met a woman named nesrin and her friends where we were able to sit down on a focus group and I realized that as I sat in her home small humble home that she shared with three other families on the ground cross-legged in front of her with an open courtyard in the back that they shared they had that one washing machine for all the families the floor was a plastic mat it was hot it was in the month of ramadhan where Muslims abstain from food and drink as I sat before her I realized had come into that room thinking that I was going to help and save her I realized how incredibly wrong that was that is not what human connectivity is about that is not what empathy is about I think that we are all on this earth with a purpose some of us figure out what that purpose is the minute we know how to speak others reflect on our deathbeds but I think most of us figure it out on our journey and what you'll learn is that your purpose can't be fulfilled alone it requires intertwining and connecting and talking and discovering and learning with this global community that we have with us and I learned sitting that day with Nasreen that my purpose was so clearly intertwined with hers that I had so much to learn not from institutions or prestigious programs but from human beings from just talking to others about their experiences what she was able to tell us and relate to us on that day is still something that I carry with me and it anchors me in our mission of social entrepreneurs there's a lot of glamour around winning the whole prize I've been able to do cool press releases and be on this stage and say I want a million dollars but none of that matters if you don't understand what your empathy is coming from neither that matters if your mission to be a human connector to connect with others is not anchoring you and this is why Nasreen was such an inspiration for us and the reason that we were able to win the whole prize outro she rides we want to create brighter lives one ride at a time and it's something that I've learned that connection happens in so many different ways things moments that are big and small it's in the different ways you interact with your friends and your family and your team and your co-workers it's not just about the big aha we can all be people who exercise empathy who learn it as a skill who hope to be participants as global citizens that want to change the world I think I learned empathy from my friends and my family for my best friends who would take my calls at 1:00 in the morning when I needed to event from my mother who makes him breakfast on days that I'm just running out of time so I can sit down think relax from my team was patience with me when I'm going crazy for my advisors behind roshni rides who spent hours of their time on Saturdays editing proposals and grants when they could have been spending that time with their family those are the small moments of exercising empathy when you sacrifice parts of yourself to parts of your time to help others to relate to them to help them so I want to before I end today's talk do two things first I want to thank all the people who allow me to be on this stage who have shown me what it means to practice human connectivity in both small and big moments many of you who are in the audience today so thank you and second I'd like all of you to exercise human connectivity in your first step to being a global citizen that wants to change the world and you can do that today right now I want you to turn to the person next to you I want you to introduce yourself and I want you to ask them how can I serve you and then I want you to watch what the power of human connection can do thank you [Applause]