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Go topBy Leyal Khalife Stepfeed Following Saudi Arabia’s recent $3.5 billion investment in on-demand riding service Uber, some have taken to social media to voice their thoughts on the matter, criticizing the entire deal from start to finish. Some are doing the math as to how many startups could have been funded with all that money… Some are speculating, thinking it’s … Continued
On the evening of Thursday, June 2, Arab America and the National U.S.-Arab Chamber of Commerce (NUSACC) hosted a reception at the National Press Club in Washington, DC to honor the 15th anniversary of the largest Arabic language e-newspaper, Elaph, and its founder, Othman Al-Omeir. Arab America President, Warren David, welcomed guests to the … Continued
BY: Nisreen Eadeh/Staff Writer This week, Crain’s Detroit Business published their annual list of the 100 Most Influential Women in Michigan for 2016. Those one the list are leaders in business, civil service, academia, medicine, and nonprofits. This year, three Arab American women were placed on Crain’s list for their distinguished careers in the fields of commerce, … Continued
Jerusalem Post PayPal, a global leader in online payment services, has cut off payments to the anti-Israel group BDS France. Early Monday, the website’s link to the money processing site returned an error message that “the recipient is currently unable to receive money.” Later in the day, the link to Paypal was removed entirely … Continued
By REEMA KHRAIS
Cape and Islands.org
About once a week, Kelsey Norman plops into a chair at her kitchen table in Los Angeles, fires up Skype and dials Asalah Razzouk, a refugee living in the mountains of Lebanon.
A Syrian TV show echoes in the background as the two catch up. They chat about the weather, weekend plans and the trash piling up in Lebanon—all in Arabic. Razzouk listens carefully to Norman’s pronunciation and grammar, ready to give feedback.
The two have been meeting this way for months through a startup called NaTakallam, or “we speak” in Arabic. The online platform pairs Syrian refugees like Razzouk with people around the world who want to brush up on their Arabic.
“This is a way for me to continue speaking with someone,” said Norman, a PhD student studying migration and citizenship, who’s been learning Arabic for the last few years. “Also, I spent a lot of time in the past two years interviewing refugees and migrants, and I know how difficult it is to find work.”
Over the last few months, Norman has done more than 20 sessions with NaTakallam, at about $15 an hour. Has her Arabic improved?
“I hope so,” she said with a laugh. “[Razzouk] would be a better judge of that than me.”
“Yes, she is better,” Razzouk said, chuckling.
Razzouk, 32, fled Al-Salamiyah, Syria a couple years ago, leaving her family behind. She and her husband are among the more than 1 million Syrian refugees in Lebanon, where 70 percent live below the poverty line.
“Everything in Syria, I miss it,” she said.
Razzouk used to teach middle school. She also has a degree in economics and had planned to continue her education before the war broke out. Her resume, however, doesn’t amount to much in Lebanon, where locking down a job as a refugee can be difficult.
“I look for a job and I talk with many friends, but I cannot [find one],” she said.
Before her new gig, she kept busy reading books at the library and watching American TV shows while her husband, a journalist, was at work. Today, she chats with several students around the world– Switzerland, Australia, U.S. – making roughly $400 a month.
“We clearly know that there’s an impact,” said Aline Sara, who co-founded NaTakallam. “We have Syrians who are making a full-time salary, or two or three times the minimum wage in places like Lebanon and Egypt.”
Syrian tutors receive $10 an hour; the rest of the money goes toward operating costs, like maintaining the website and travel. To help recruit teachers, the startup has been working with the Beirut-based nonprofit organization Sawa for Development and Aid.
Sara said she came up with the idea for NaTakallam last year after finishing graduate school at Columbia University. As a Lebanese-American, she wanted to sharpen her own Arabic.
“My grandma would tease me and say, ‘You’ve been studying Arabic for so many years and you still speak with a broken accent!’” she said with a laugh.
But perfecting her accent is nothing compared to launching a business. She’s had to battle stereotypes about Syrian refugees, deal with unpredictable internet and electricity in foreign countries and, of course, raise money.
So far, NaTakallam has signed up roughly 30 Syrians around the world – from Brazil to Egypt – to work with more than 150 students at a given time.
“It’s not us helping them because they’re desperate refugees. It’s us leveraging everything they have to offer,” said Sara, adding that many of the refugees are architects, lawyers and former students.
For language learners, it’s an opportunity to practice conversational Arabic, which is often left out in U.S. classes. Most language courses focus on classical Arabic.
In fact, some universities have decided to team up with NaTakallam to give their students a chance to complement their traditional classes with Skype conversations. Swarthmore College and George Washington University, for example, are setting aside small funds to help cover costs.
“It’s a nice way to be in your bedroom in Brooklyn and talk to someone who’s in the mountains in Lebanon who can share your story, but also help you practice your Arabic,” Sara said.
Source: capeandislands.org
Three Egyptian immigrants who saw a demand for Halal food in New York City started the Halal Guys street food carts serving up hot halal meats, pita brea, and sauces. They went from having one cart, to 355 throughout the country, and even one in the Philippines. From their franchise, they began a scholarship fund … Continued
BY: Nisreen Eadeh/Staff Writer The gaming community has been reporting on a new app called Liyla and the Shadows of War because Apple refused to include it in the Game section of the App Store last week, claiming it was too politically charged. Liyla and the Shadows of War is a black-and-white app that shows … Continued
BY Leila Hatoum
Newsweek ME
It is practically impossible to get Silicon Valley investors to fund a start-up in the Middle East, because they do not believe there is tech talent in this region, says Joy Ajlouny, co-founder of Fetchr, a Dubai-based tech company with an app that allows you to use your cell phone number as your address, “but we did it.”
Nearly three years ago, the Palestinian-American businesswoman met with Idriss Al Rifai, an Arab entrepreneur who was in Silicon Valley looking for marketing his project Meena360, which looked at tackling the difficulty of accurate logistics in the Middle East; a challenge for companies that wanted to ship their products to the region.
At the time, Ajlouny was looking for her next business venture after selling her luxury e-commerce platform Bonfaire—a discovery platform for new designers—to Moda Operandi, a fashion giant in the LVMH family.
While working at Bonfaire, Ajlouny noticed that most of her shipments to the Middle East were being returned to the U.S. with a note saying they were unable to find the address.
“I thought there must be some kind of mistake on the delivery company’s part. But upon further investigation, I came to discover that the problem was that there were no [clear] addresses in the Middle East,” she tells Newsweek Middle East.
“Idriss had a problem related to shipping and we were talking and we decided to team up. That is how Fetchr was born,” she says. Fetchr needed seed funding but at some point it seemed unlikely that it would get the money from Silicon Valley.
However, after much persistence on their part, Fetchr managed to raise a total of $11 million for their joint venture, mostly from New Enterprise Associates.
“Silicon Valley don’t invest in Middle Eastern or Arab start-ups. They like to invest in India and China where the talent is. No one there thinks there’s tech talent in the Arab world,” says Ajlouny. And being a start-up from Dubai, it was “a coup” to get that money from Silicon Valley investors.
Come and Get It
Fetchr is an app and that helps deliver packages to the location of your mobile phone. The company has a patent for using a smartphone’s GPS location as an address. Similar to Uber, a simple tap tells the delivery crew the exact location of delivery, making life easy for both the delivery person and the receiver.
“No more annoying phone calls with language barriers, asking where you live, and for landmarks and directions,” says Ajlouny.
New Horizons
And it seems that three years on, the app is doing well: Business is growing by 20 percent, week on week.
Fetchr, which currently operates in the UAE, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, is also eyeing new market.
The company plans to open in Egypt by end of this month. “And we are going into another round of fund raising both in Silicon Valley and the Arab Gulf states,” says Ajlouny.
Trouble In Paradise
Ajlouny currently sees Dubai, in essence, as “the only place in the Middle East” which presents a real chance for tech companies to thrive in a stable environment.
“But we are not completely there yet,” she says, adding that the lack of directions, and ambiguity in terms of knowing who to approach and where to go, as well as speed of doing business, all impact Dubai’s ability to be the Silicon Valley of this region.
“It is hard for a company to come and start up and succeed not knowing everything that is available. A lot of us don’t know where to go,” says Aljouny. In addition to that, start-ups don’t need a license in Silicon Valley, unlike Dubai.
“There are things to tackle, but it is on its way there,” she adds.
Source: newsweekme.com
JASON LEMON Stepfeed.com For thousands of years, the Middle East has been wowing the world with the impressive architectural feats of the ancient Egyptians, the ancient ruins of Baalbek and the lost city of Petra. Today, this tradition of world-class architecture is far from being a thing of the past. Throughout the region, mind-blowingly impressive buildings … Continued
Investor’s Business Daily Scandal: A new investigation reveals that Bill and Hillary Clinton took in at least $100 million from Middle East leaders. Can such a financially and ethically compromised candidate truly function as our nation’s leader? The investigation by the Daily Caller News Foundation has uncovered a disturbing pattern of the Clintons’ raising money … Continued
The American Psychological Association (APA) has granted a nonexclusive license to United Palestinian Appeal (UPA) to translate into Arabic several titles published by APA’s Magination Press® children’s book imprint and to distribute free copies to children and their caregivers living in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.
Books will be distributed by UPA via its school-based “Healing Through Feeling” program in Gaza, which enables Palestinian mental health practitioners to provide kindergartners, their families, teachers and caregivers the awareness needed to understand and address their symptoms of trauma.
“United Palestinian Appeal is very pleased that the APA has agreed to this arrangement to the benefit of children in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank,” said UPA Executive Director Saleem F. Zaru. “We appreciate APA’s support and are very proud of this program.”
APA Executive Publisher Jasper Simons said the agreement directly supports APA’s mission to advance psychological science to benefit society and improve people’s lives. “Helping children in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank who may be subject to significant stress and trauma is very much in keeping with our mission,” he added. “We are delighted to work with UPA on this initiative.”
Magination Press titles that are included in this partnership are: Healing Days: A Guide for Kids Who Have Experienced Trauma by Susan Farber Strauss, PhD; Imagine a Rainbow: A Child’s Guide to Soothing Pain by Brenda S. Miles, PhD; Jenny Is Scared! When Sad Things Happen in the World by Carol Shuman, PhD; Max Archer, Kid Detective: The Case of the Wet Bed by Howard J. Bennett, MD; and A Terrible Thing Happened: A Story for Children Who Have Witnessed Violence or Trauma by Margaret M. Holmes.
The American Psychological Association, in Washington, D.C., is the largest scientific and professional organization representing psychology in the United States. APA’s membership includes more than 117,500 researchers, educators, clinicians, consultants and students. Through its divisions in 54 subfields of psychology and affiliations with 60 state, territorial and Canadian provincial associations, APA works to advance the creation, communication and application of psychological knowledge to benefit society and improve people’s lives. For more information, visit www.apa.org.
United Palestinian Appeal is a non-partisan, non-sectarian American registered 501(c) (3) non-profit organization with its headquarters in Washington, D.C., and activities in Palestine, Jordan and Lebanon. It works to alleviate the suffering of Palestinian people and strives to contribute to the long-term socioeconomic and cultural development of Palestinian communities. UPA’s focus areas are health and wellness, education, and community and economic development.
Established in 1978, UPA is the oldest Palestinian-American non-profit organization working to support Palestinians. Throughout the years, UPA has allocated over $100 million for projects and programs in support of its mission. For more information, visit www.helpupa.org.
Source: campaign.r20.constantcontact.com
American-based shoe company, Reebok, was put under fire on social media this week for the alleged release of the “Israel 68” shoe. The special edition shoe was going to be released around the world, in tandem with Israel’s independence day celebrations May 11-12. However, due to miscommunication it has been revealed that this is false. Reebok … Continued
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