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Lena

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50
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2016-12-16
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2016-12-16
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  1. “I think that it's very important for people to understand that Syria is really much, much beyond a political problem at this point. It's really a collective humanity issue. And the way that we will deal with this crisis, this ongoing crisis, and not just the refugees, the actual conflict itself really will define all of us in history. It's a responsibility. It's not something you can just sit out. No, it's not. I want to thank you for being here today to talk about this. I'm sure it's not easy given all the things that you've witnessed firsthand and that's going on for you guys to talk about it in this context. But we really appreciate your taking the time and the work that you do. Thank you for joining the A6NC podcast.”

    2016-12-16 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Mobility and the Global Refugee Crisis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  2. “To help, we're seeing it often starts with an individual just having an idea or saying we should figure out a way to help, and how do we bring what's unique about our company to bear on this problem? So you mentioned Airbnb before. They are now soliciting their host community to take in refugees on an emergency basis. It may be as simple as simply opening up job opportunities to refugees. In most of these companies, you get benefits and you get socialized in working with other people. And that gives you a platform to go on from there. So I think it's really a matter too of people just asking themselves wherever they're working is there something either that I can do as an individual or is there something that my company can bring to this, not just necessarily in inventing something, but literally opening its doors in a new way to bringing people in.”

    2016-12-16 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Mobility and the Global Refugee Crisis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  3. “What this really points to is that given the complexity, the magnitude of the problem, no single actor, whether it's government, whether it's NGOs, whether it's the international relief system, whether it's Silicon Valley, no single actor can solve it alone. But together, working together, coordinated together, there are solutions. And that's what we need to do. We need to bring people together to channel their energies and their focus on this challenge.”

    2016-12-16 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Mobility and the Global Refugee Crisis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  4. “Exactly. Both Washington having humility, but Silicon Valley having the humility, and knowing those tools and solutions can only go so far, but there's a lot more they can go, but realize what the broader context you operate in so we don't get carried away and say, oh, tech is going to lead us all to hold hands and sing kumbaya.”

    2016-12-16 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Mobility and the Global Refugee Crisis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  5. “And there's a tech issue too. I mean, fintech, for example, Alex here says often, you know, if you had to recreate a bank right now, what would you do differently? Everything. I mean, you're dealing with some areas where you don't have normal credit scores. You have people who may have access to mobile money, but not actually credit cards. The real gap I see here is here are the policy needs. Here's what's going on on the ground. Let's tell people what's happening and then combine that with people who are just thinking about kind of solutions.”

    2016-12-16 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Mobility and the Global Refugee Crisis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  6. “Jordan is to allow kids to get informal education while we're trying to find space for them in the formal system. But that informal education needs to be accredited. You need to be able, once you've had a year or two of learning in a community center, in a UN agency, the ability to have that translate into credit for the formal system. And that's a policy issue because in a lot of countries they don't allow.”

    2016-12-16 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Mobility and the Global Refugee Crisis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  7. “And this is where government can actually play a key role. There's always a policy component to this too. So for example, with Jordan, we've worked with the Europeans and with Jordan to develop a compact so that if a product is made in a certain area and refugees are part of making that product, it will get some kind of preferential treatment when it's exported to another market. But the companies involved will employ the local population and employed refugees at the same time. Similarly, a lot of these countries, because they're so-called middle income countries, don't qualify for the lowest lending rates from the international financial institutions. We've instituted a new policy that gives them access to those rates in order to help meet some of the burden. So this is an area where governments can really make a difference in changing policy. One other example, when it comes to education, one of the most important things we can do because of this lack of capacity in a Turkey-Lebanon.”

    2016-12-16 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Mobility and the Global Refugee Crisis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  8. “That they have not anticipated for. So there's a delicate balance between helping to solve the problems that they need while also not creating the conditions that what is meant to be a temporary refugee camp instead becomes a permanent city, where in fact a lot of the refugees actually just want to go home.”

    2016-12-16 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Mobility and the Global Refugee Crisis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  9. “Yeah, we need to realize, as Lena said, these are man-made problems, and governments are dealing with complicated political issues. So for Silicon Valley, for example, as I think there has been resistance in the past about getting involved in some of these because it can seem political. You know, it's one thing to deal with response to like a hurricane or an earthquake. You know, another thing to look at issues that get into very complicated immigration or political issues. And I think you need to strike the right balance of going in and helping on the ground, but also realizing that there are many players on the ground. There are non-government organizations who have been dealing with this for a while, and you want to make sure is when you're going in, you're aware of the larger context, so you're not doing harm. But there's another side, too, that I heard a lot, whether you're talking to the governments of Jordan or Turkey or Lebanon that faces the refugees, where on the one hand, they obviously want to help address the problem and the suffering that happens to our refugees. On the other hand, they're concerned about creating a new permanent citizen group.”

    2016-12-16 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Mobility and the Global Refugee Crisis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  10. “You think about technologists building tools, at the end of the day, our job is to build solutions. And it doesn't mean that it replaces structural things that need to happen as well. But it comes from LinkedIn's program matching refugees with job opportunities or Airbnb matching housing or tech refugees, a conference in London that's bringing all these people together and trying to build new types of apps. We don't want to amify immigration, but you're also telling me that there's this important awareness of how a lot of these problems are actually, they do require Awareness”

    2016-12-16 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Mobility and the Global Refugee Crisis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  11. “I was frustrated with Washington bureaucracy as much as anyone, and I was in the administration for seven years. But the thing that surprises me is there is an enormous sense of mission, both in Washington and in here. People want to solve things. Like they're willing to work hard. It's not about the pay, and it's not about the risk of failure. Like you're willing to do it. You just want to feel like you're part of something bigger and then you're empowered to do it.”

    2016-12-16 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Mobility and the Global Refugee Crisis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  12. “Lena said it's very important that those solutions be not just designed with refugees in mind, but also designed by refugees because they will have a much better innate understanding of where their interests are, what their needs are, than anyone doing it from the outside. So government's role in a sense is to be a convener, a catalyzer, bringing these groups together. We're finding that virtually everything we're trying to do in foreign policy is at the intersection of foreign policy and technology. And so many of the answers have a technological component. They may not be the entire answer or the only answer, but it's often part of it. And so if we're trying to do arms control around the world, if we're trying to monitor a ceasefire, if we're trying to figure out how to promote greater health security, energy security, food security, there's going to be a technological component. And same with the refugee crisis. So we actually come out here on a regular basis and we get the best mines we can find to sit together and to think together around solving a problem.”

    2016-12-16 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Mobility and the Global Refugee Crisis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  13. “Synkids to different ideas, different creative concepts, things that they are, they were not open to before. They don't have exposure to, and especially the teenagers, which we think are the most vulnerable refugee population, both boys and girls, because we have a very limited amount of time to intervene and get them either to stay in school, get them into higher education opportunities, or get them to be able to train in useful skills that they could actually use to have the employment opportunities.”

    2016-12-16 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Mobility and the Global Refugee Crisis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  14. “Her what she does because they saw her taking notes and she told them I'm a journalist and they all said we want to learn journalism and she set up a workshop the next day which we hadn't planned for right in the garden because we didn't even have a classroom for her and within a year because she created a Facebook group with the kids that she gave the journalism class to and she went back with another group of journalists. These are all like New York Times AP journalists and they did a video editing class and In terms of scale, it's very interesting because the first group she had was 40 kids. The Facebook group became around 20 and then the actual group who took the advanced journalism class was about 10 and out of those 10 kids after one year who never thought they ever wanted to do journalism we had four who now work full time for a newspaper in Istanbul as their job and one of the kids has two front page stories and that's just from introducing”

    2016-12-16 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Mobility and the Global Refugee Crisis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  15. “One of the most frustrating things for me as someone who runs a nonprofit when I constantly find, for instance, technology or apps or curriculum about coding, for instance. If we teach kids how to code, then problem solved, we can all become coders. The solution is not in teaching kids how to code. The solution is how do you introduce Syrian refugee kids or any group of kids to the concept of coding in a way that connects them to passions that they might use in the future to or not use depending on what they actually want to do in life and take that and run. We had a journalist with us on one of our missions that we do in refugee schools in Turkey and we take all sorts of mentors with us who are artists, journalists, writers, dentists, all sorts of people. And we had a journalist with us and the kids saw her and they asked.”

    2016-12-16 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Mobility and the Global Refugee Crisis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  16. “Who they are and contribute in some natural way. And I do think that we have a tendency sometimes in tech to get a little solutionistic. But we are in the business of thinking of solutions. And so that said, where are the areas that we can build tools to empower education and some of the other things that you're talking about?”

    2016-12-16 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Mobility and the Global Refugee Crisis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  17. “Word in India Jugad, which is like you have very limited constraints and you have to figure out how to innovate within these limited constraints. And there's a lot of resourcefulness that comes with that. To your point, Lena. The flip side of it is exactly right, that I don't think we can expect the superhero narrative either when people reference Steve Jobs. Like there's a million. Steve Jobs in hiding in a current cohort of refugees because Steve Jobs, you know, technically was. But the reality is these are just people living their daily lives. We just want to.”

    2016-12-16 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Mobility and the Global Refugee Crisis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  18. “I think that's so important that you brought that up. It's really about empowering voices, whether you're creating tools for people, whether you're a user of a tool. When you talk about innovation as an overused word, I mean, I agree with that. We're in the business of that. So it's kind of hard not to use that word, but I will say that the concept that comes to mind is this concept of jugad innovation, which is a term that Navi Rajdhu wrote about a few years ago. But it's based on this.”

    2016-12-16 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Mobility and the Global Refugee Crisis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  19. “Apps for humanitarian aid have become almost meaningless because everybody thinks that they can create an app and it's going to solve the problem or we can paste the word innovation on anything and that basically becomes innovative and it's really not the most innovative solutions are coming from the people themselves and this is what we're seeing in the media with like the feel-good stories of refugees who've made it in Germany or made it in the US and brought pieces of their culture and now they're very successful even these stories are painting refugees as almost these superheroes that they're going to come and they're going to be in the Olympics or they're going to come and build an unbelievable restaurant.”

    2016-12-16 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Mobility and the Global Refugee Crisis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  20. “Think that's basically the biggest issue there was never enough listening to the refugees and to the communities. What we saw in Zatari was basically the UNHCR director of Zatari camp said we came to build a camp and the Syrians came to build a city and it took that long to realize that these Syrian refugees are coming from a background educated, have funds fleeing violence and they weren't going to sit around in a camp waiting for their two UNHCR meals a day and sit there in a camp for the 17 average years. They are going to set up shop. They are going to trade and build an economy, an internal economy and make things and sell things and figure it out because that's who they are. And we see that across the board with Syrian refugees and that's really heartbreaking because I feel like even the word innovation or”

    2016-12-16 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Mobility and the Global Refugee Crisis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  21. “One of the things that just struck me and made it personal is, you know, when I would go to the Middle East and I went there 30 times in three years and I was talking to a senior Jordanian official and he said, look, I understand the protection and you have the best planes and the best intelligence in the world. But he's like, do you know what, Matt? What I really need? I need four million jobs. I remember we were at an office near the Zachri refugee camp and we're meeting with a group of women. They first showed us their mobile phones and they showed us how they were using Facebook and other online platforms to sell handmade goods. You're sitting in the situation room, those are not the types of things you're trying to think about.”

    2016-12-16 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Mobility and the Global Refugee Crisis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  22. “And I think one of the things that we're seeing too, and Lena mentioned this as well, if you're trying to monitor a ceasefire or a cessation of hostilities, sometimes the groups that would normally do that can't get in, don't have access. But the people do. They're there. And just as you said, Matt, there's also a two-way communication possibility so that if people are in harm's way, they can hopefully be warned and can get out of the way. Or conversely, they can report that something's happening that we didn't know about. And maybe we can, maybe we can help stop it. If they're equipped with a smartphone, they're able to report in real time whether there's a violation.”

    2016-12-16 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Mobility and the Global Refugee Crisis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  23. “From the government side, the phone can actually be used to help with civilian casualties. So if you're a refugee being victim to strikes that are happening using the phones to report when you hear airplanes overhead or drones overhead or things like that, it can communicate a huge amount of information. I felt when I was in the government for government policymakers, there's this assumption from the outside that our intelligence collection is omnipotent and journalists we can get information from everywhere, but it's really the individual stories that you get from people which can show where should we devote resources and what should we be doing.”

    2016-12-16 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Mobility and the Global Refugee Crisis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  24. “20,000 people have been there in that camp now for over five years and they live still in plastic tents and in the mud and in the dust and they don't have access to bathrooms or heating systems or really any kind of basic necessities for years and one of the women lost both of her children In a campfire, and there was a fire in her tent. Within a few minutes, she lost both of her children. And all she had left of them were the pictures of them on her phone. And when I met her, she told me her whole story and she said, I can never lose this phone because that's all I have left of them. I lost my home. I lost my family. I lost my kids. And all I have left is my phone.”

    2016-12-16 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Mobility and the Global Refugee Crisis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  25. “Can't make the journey from Turkey to Greece without it. People were using GPS coordination systems to connect with different boats and different people, families often get separated during the journey. The only way that they can connect is through their phones. One Syrian refugee that I'm in connection with in Istanbul, she says, WhatsApp is everything. I can't live without WhatsApp. That's the most important thing I have. I don't know any Syrian family, including my own, that doesn't have their family WhatsApp group, because that's the only way that you can actually see each other because people don't meet each other anymore inside Syria. So it's very, very important as a piece of connection and also as for documentation. One of the saddest uses of a phone that I've ever witnessed was in the Ultime IDP camp that's in northern Syria, which I visited in late 2010.”

    2016-12-16 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Mobility and the Global Refugee Crisis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  26. “One of the economic statistics is that smartphones are chopping into smugglers and traffickers' business. There's a really popular Facebook group that's called, and this is a title, Smuggle Yourself to Europe Without a Trafficker. And that's supposed to be the most popular Facebook group among refugees.”

    2016-12-16 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Mobility and the Global Refugee Crisis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  27. “I can't overestimate how important this smartphone has been to Syrian refugees and even to the Syrian revolution in general and social media and YouTube and connecting information, getting information out from inside Syria, recording protests, recording atrocities, recording airstrikes, recording basically everything that journalists cannot access inside Syria because of the regimes closing off Syria really to any kind of outside media that is not overseen by the government. So I think that we've seen an arc with using technology in terms of connections from the beginning of the Arab Spring Syrian uprising all the way through the refugee crisis. Refugees, the most important Object that they have is their smartphone.”

    2016-12-16 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Mobility and the Global Refugee Crisis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  28. “Yeah, well, I think you've really touched on some of the key aspects of this. There is connectivity that otherwise wouldn't exist. That means a lot of things. It means that families are actually in touch with one another. That's vitally important, whether it's families that are themselves in the refugee flow or family members who may already have gotten to another country, even though they're underfunded and overburdened. There still are a lot of resources out there. But if people don't know it, if they can't get the information, it doesn't do them any good. So having that kind of connectivity and getting that kind of information flow going is vital. It's a basic life support system.”

    2016-12-16 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Mobility and the Global Refugee Crisis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  29. “Okay, so the story that we've been reading a lot in the news, and I read two articles in both. But the flip side of this is that there's also a question for me about who has access to these mobile phones. Is it people who could afford them in their home countries? What about confiscation of mobile phones at checkpoints, people asking for passwords to your Facebook accounts or mobile phones are also surveillance devices? So there's sort of a double-edged sword here. I'd love to hear your guys' thoughts on how mobile phones are playing a unique role in this particular modern migration.”

    2016-12-16 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Mobility and the Global Refugee Crisis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  30. “You can get the hardware. Into the hands of children, and then you can get the software on the hardware with the right curriculum. Then you can actually prevent a gap from growing. And it creates a stop gap while you're trying to find space for kids in the formal education system. We're seeing that start to have an impact. That's just one way of doing things. Same on the employment front. And again, the numbers are not big, but the ability of some people to be able through the internet to actually be employed at a distance, to be making something or providing some service that can then be delivered through the internet, that can take some burden off of the local job market and create opportunities that wouldn't otherwise exist. Now, it's still a relatively small thing, and it tends to cater to more skilled people, but we see this working as well. We're trying to expand that.”

    2016-12-16 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Mobility and the Global Refugee Crisis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  31. “That innate optimism that comes from being a child. But technology can play a usual role. So just to cite one example, in education, these classrooms are overwhelmed and overburdened in these countries. They can't keep up with the indigenous demand, much less refugees. Now, huge efforts have been made in all three of those countries have done incredible work to actually create greater access, but there's still big gaps. There are distance learning platforms that can make a huge difference. And sometimes this can be run through UN agencies and other NGOs.”

    2016-12-16 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Mobility and the Global Refugee Crisis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  32. “Look, this is critical because two things one, if you're in a country of first refuge or asylum like Turkey, Jordan, Lebanon, as I mentioned, what people desperately need are access to education for their kids and access to employment for their parents. In fact, visiting in Beirut, one of the community centers established by, in this case, Caritas, a Catholic relief, to support refugees from Syria, you'd go from room to room. And in the first room, the men, the climate in that room could best be described as depressed. And the reason was these men had been stripped of their dignity because they couldn't work, didn't have access to jobs, couldn't provide for their families. And they felt it. And then you moved on to the women in the next room, and there was a frantic energy in that room, but that was because they were desperate to figure out how to get their kids or keep their kids in school. The good news was when you moved to talk to the children, they still had.”

    2016-12-16 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Mobility and the Global Refugee Crisis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  33. “We're talking a lot right now on what's happening during migration. What happens post resettlement? There's a lot of technologies and new companies out there that have a lot of things around like mobile visas. We have a company in our own portfolio, Teleport, that does, what are some of the technologies that are post-settlement?”

    2016-12-16 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Mobility and the Global Refugee Crisis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  34. “Yeah, the short answer is yes. And it's something that as sophisticated as the system is, as much work and effort already goes into it, we're constantly looking for ways to perfect it. And one of the ways is through technology”

    2016-12-16 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Mobility and the Global Refugee Crisis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  35. “You've got the alphabet soup of agencies that are involved in this in different ways. Not just the State Department, but the FBI, the CIA, the NTCC, the other intelligence agencies all pulling whatever data is available, interviews by people who are trained in this skill set, interviews of people who know the person applying to be a refugee, very, very sophisticated work, biometrics. All of this is pulled together and marshalled together. And job number one for these agencies, for the government is security. Because even though, again, as I said, 99.9% are people fleeing violence, not perpetrating it, we want to make sure that that point 1% doesn't get in.”

    2016-12-16 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Mobility and the Global Refugee Crisis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  36. “And it's exactly the reverse. They are fleeing terrorism. They're not terrorists. Second, when it comes to the United States, we're almost in a unique position because the overwhelming majority of refugees who come here are actually referred in the first instance by the United Nations. And they've gone through an entire process of vetting first by the United Nations and one of its agencies. Then when they're referred to us, they go through our process, which is extraordinary in its focus and depth. We have multiple security agencies that are doing very detailed background checks, investigations of anyone seeking to come here on average.”

    2016-12-16 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Mobility and the Global Refugee Crisis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  37. “Well, a couple of things. First, we have to keep in mind one basic fact is that the overwhelming majority of refugees, people who are leaving everything behind, putting their lives in danger to come cross an ocean, put themselves in the hands of human traffickers even. These are people who are fleeing violence, not perpetrating violence. And it's really important to just start with that basic premise.”

    2016-12-16 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Mobility and the Global Refugee Crisis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  38. “Yeah, and I would actually add too that it's not always going to be the example of two parents who are doctors, but there are people who are productive members of society in so many other ways. How do you know and is it good to even try to, is that the right thing to do to try to filter that”

    2016-12-16 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Mobility and the Global Refugee Crisis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  39. “We just right now have a situation where there are millions of Afghan refugees in Pakistan who are finding the climate in Pakistan to be less hospitable than it was, who are being driven back into Afghanistan. Needless to say, Afghanistan is not in the ideal situation to take in more of its own citizens at this point. That's creating a whole new crisis.”

    2016-12-16 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Mobility and the Global Refugee Crisis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  40. “Which is But tragically, here's what we know. Civil wars, like the one in Syria, don't end overnight. On average, we're looking at a decade. And in the case of something as complex as Syria when you have multiple actors involved, well beyond a decade. And Syria is now in year six of the Civil War.”

    2016-12-16 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Mobility and the Global Refugee Crisis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  41. “Very hard in many of these places for adults to work as a policy matter to get countries to change their policies to allow people to work. But in the absence of that, it drives kids into the gray market to do jobs that it would be harder to detect. That means they're not in school. And even when they want to go to school, they may Resettle more people, but I Lina said something really important too. So many people who are in this situation, it's not that they want to come here or want to come to Europe or Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan. Their highest aspiration is to come home.”

    2016-12-16 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Mobility and the Global Refugee Crisis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  42. “25 hours a day trying to do that, even just getting a cessation of hostilities to take that pressure off and get humanitarian assistance flowing. But as that's happening, what's driving them when they get to Jordan, Lebanon, and Turkey are two things. One is access to education. They want their kids to be in school. And second is the ability to work. What you're seeing is so many people and so many middle class people who've left take their savings with them. 90% are not in refugee camps. They are actually integrated into host communities. That means they have to pay for housing. And that means if they can't work, they're going to deplete their savings and they're going to reach a point where the money's gone.”

    2016-12-16 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Mobility and the Global Refugee Crisis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  43. “If you visit Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey, these are the countries that have received the most Syrian refugees because, as Lena said, they're the neighboring countries. And put this in perspective. In Lebanon today, somewhere between a quarter and a third of the entire population is Assyrian refugee. There are more Syrian children in Lebanese public schools than there are Lebanese children in these schools. Imagine the burden that this puts on these countries. Transpose it to the United States. The number of refugees in Lebanon, if you transpose that to the United States, it would be the equivalent of us taking 70 million people. And you know the debates we're having about taking 10,000 Syrian refugees. So these countries are bearing a very significant burden. And Lina's exactly right. Ultimately, the way to end this challenge and problem is to end the civil war in Syria and to stop the bombing. And we're working.”

    2016-12-16 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Mobility and the Global Refugee Crisis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  44. “I'm also a daughter of immigrants, and I was born and raised in the U.S., but my family, my extended family, my mom's side was in Uganda, and they were kicked out during the 70s with Ed Amin. My mom's sister went to Sweden, and my grandparents went to the UK. And I think that's the other side of this discussion. You mentioned the impact on receiving countries and communities Can we talk a little bit about that? Like, what some of the fears and concerns are and what's top of mind for folks?”

    2016-12-16 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Mobility and the Global Refugee Crisis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  45. “Savings being depleted and used really the last of their savings to be able to take that journey. When you get to the United States, the snapshot of refugees is very diverse. It goes from people that were able to get through the whole vetting process and get here. And some of these people have never traveled outside Syria before and are finding life in the United States very alienating. I mean, it comes to my own parents who are American but had to flee Aleppo in 2012. And both of them are doctors. But when they came here in 2012, they came with their four suitcases. It wasn't their choice. That's a perspective that I personally see as a daughter of immigrants who came in the 70s and came with the immigrant mentality and wanting to make a better future for themselves and their families.”

    2016-12-16 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Mobility and the Global Refugee Crisis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  46. “Depends on where you're looking at. If you're looking at the immediate host countries, and even then, it would depend on where they are, the closer to the border they are, the less money they had to flee with. Probably it's the least pleasant to be living in the IDP camps that are inside Syrian borders and then the refugee camps that are right outside Syrian borders. The further away you get from Syria, the more you see that it's really Syria's middle class that was able to flee into Europe. something that people don't realize watching the images of Syrian refugees arriving to Europe, which is an extremely difficult journey, but actually has cost these refugee families thousands and thousands of dollars to actually get a place on a smuggler's boat. It's the businessmen, the educated, the university students, and people who had a very good life in Syria lived in host countries for a few years watched their”

    2016-12-16 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Mobility and the Global Refugee Crisis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  47. “To Greece and through Europe and what we saw last year and all of the drownings and all of the people in these camps. And this problem is continuing because of the conflict that continues in Syria. And I think that's one of the most important reasons that people have to keep in mind is that this is not some kind of natural disaster. This is a man-made conflict, man-made reasons. And if the violence stopped, especially the airstrikes, the refugee crisis would at least be stemmed and a lot of refugees that I know would be able to return to their homes.”

    2016-12-16 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Mobility and the Global Refugee Crisis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  48. “I mean, it is a global crisis, and millions and millions of people are displaced right now, and they come from all over the world. But for Syria specifically, we have a situation where we have over 5 million Syrian refugees outside the country, over 6 million internally displaced, which means that there are more than half of the original population of Syria now does not live in their homes. People don't realize that before 2011, the number of Syrian refugees was zero. And so it's this huge crisis at this staggering scale that happened very, very quickly. And I think that's one of the reasons why it takes more precedence in the media, in addition to the way that the crisis unfolded, especially with the waves of refugees going from”

    2016-12-16 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Mobility and the Global Refugee Crisis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  49. “I think you've got a confluence of factors. One is that, unfortunately, we're seeing more conflict in different places, but also, and ironically in a sense, the spread of information has actually, in a way, exacerbated the crisis because people are now more aware of what's going on outside of where they're living. They're more aware that life can be different somewhere else. They're in greater touch with people who have already left and have gone somewhere else. And that too creates a sort of pull factor that didn't exist as much in the past when people were more closed off.”

    2016-12-16 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Mobility and the Global Refugee Crisis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  50. “Really important to put this in perspective. You know, we throw around words like crisis very easily, but this is a global crisis, and it is of historic proportions. Think about it this way. We are now dealing with the largest single wave of human displacement around the world since World War II. More people on the move because they are displaced from their homes. And if you put all of these people together who are now currently displaced into one country, it would be the 25th or 24th largest country on earth, bigger than South Korea, bigger than Spain. And what's in the headlines, of course, is Syria, but it's global in nature. We have refugees, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Bangladesh, a dozen countries in Africa. And of course, Latin America as well. And because it's a global crisis, it actually demands a global response. No single country can deal with this effectively on its own.”

    2016-12-16 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Mobility and the Global Refugee Crisis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source