Corporate venture capital professionals can play a key role in contributing knowledge and support in the global effort to help Syrian refugees, representatives from two non-profit groups told the GCV Symposium today.
Joséphine Goube, chief operating officer of Techfugees, and Puneh Ala’i, founder of For The Unseen, were speaking on a panel moderated by Sasha Johnson, founder and managing director of Global Technology Capital.
London-based Techfugees, founded by TechCrunch editor-at-large Mike Butcher and entrepreneur Petra Johansson, founder of TwistedTree, in September 2015, is a social enterprise initiative that brings together the global tech community to aid refugees. It now has 27 chapters and 11,000 members working on over 100 tech projects focused on social inclusion, tech infrastructure, education and healthcare.
Irvine, California-headquartered For The Unseen, founded by Ala’i following a trip to Syria in 2013, is a non-profit that funds humanitarian projects. It currently supports the Birds of Hope School in Lebanon, where over 1,000 children who fled Syria are now students.
For The Unseen provides financing for a variety of school needs, from teachers’ salaries to educational equipment. CVC investors tend to be highly sought after in the donor community because they can offer technical skills as well as financial expertise.
Ala’i said that in addition to donations, she is seeking IT support for the Birds of Hope School in Lebanon, while Goube said that in Germany and in the UK, Techfugees is actively teaching refugees how to code in order to help them integrate into the European workforce.
“There are 20 million refugees worldwide, and 13 million of them are Syrian,” Ala’i said. “It is important for all of us to focus on” this crisis and the millions of children in need, she added.