New York Business Journal - One entrepreneur's mission: Helping refugees find a brighter future
Charlie Grosso may have the creative mind for advertising, but her heart is driven by something deeper.
After launching her first business at the age of 20, she went on to work with a variety of famous brands, including Nike Inc. (NYSE: NKE), J.C. Penny Co. Inc. (NYSE: JCP), Lexus, Comedy Central, Paramount, Variety and FX.
But in the last 10 years, Grosso has toiled in more than 70 countries, working to make a difference in the lives of refugee students and their families.
Grosso, 39, has lent her expertise as a writer, photographer and filmmaker to strategic management and program design for social enterprises, tech companies and non-governmental organizations (NGOs).
The result is Hello Future, an organization devoted to providing kids with digital literacy skills so they can seize educational and employment opportunities.
For the pilot program, Hello Future partnered with STEP, a UK-based NGO, to help 22 Syrian teenagers improve their future prospects by connecting with the world at large.
Read on to learn more about Grosso and the mission of Hello Future.
Where were you born?
Taiwan, Taipei. Then I moved to Los Angeles at the age of 11. I moved to New York City at 30. The move from Taipei to L.A. was abrupt and sudden. It created a deep sense of dislocation and displacement that colored my youth and my career. I understood refugees’ loss of home and identity, and that impart drives the work we do at Hello Future.
What inspired you to launch Hello Future?
Hello Future is the culmination of my professional careers, where everything has merged into this amazing, meaningful organization. Following a career in photography, brand management, and running an art gallery, I knew that I wanted my next career not only to build upon my skills as a storyteller, but to also focus on international work and be of service.
After the Arab Spring and the peak of the refugee crisis in the Middle East in 2015, I knew that my work had to help the people and families there. Following a move to Istanbul in 2016, I began speaking with refugees and their families in Turkey and Iraqi Kurdistan. Hello Future was founded on what I learned first-hand in the field with refugee families.
How has the mission evolved?
Those initial conversations with refugees and their families shed a light on the short-term solutions that many NGOs provide to refugees. These services, while helpful in the short-term, are more “crisis management” than any type of long-term solutions that will lead to these families ever feeling truly settled again.
At Hello Future, we are working to provide youth and families the foundational skills needed to thrive outside of the camps; to not just imagine but work towards a day beyond the refugee camps. We provide mobile phone-based education to adolescent refugees and 21st century skills training so they can have greater job opportunities and go beyond the limits of camp education.
Hello Future is a holistic program, one that has been designed to scale as a plug-n-play companion to larger NGO development efforts and via our own expansion efforts with local, accredited teachers.
Just how valuable is Hello Future for kids?
Hello Future is invaluable. Not only are we providing the students we serve skills to enter and thrive in the global economy beyond life in the refugee camps, but one a more human level, we’re giving these teens the things they crave: a sense of self, a sense of community, and the hope to get and keep them.
Fundamental understanding of technology and how to operate as a global citizen are essential to compete and thrive in the 21st century global economy. Yet we assume that teenagers are born with these skills and understand of how to be a global citizen. That assumption is false. These skills are still learned, formally or informally, just like everyone else.
For refugees, where resources for education, communication, and self-expression are severely limited, the benefits of technology and the Internet can really amplify opportunities. The Internet can become a great equalizer. But before Syrian refugee teens can learn languages, or code, or complete certificate programs, they need to first become aware that these programs are available to them.
The U.S. has historically been a welcoming nation to refugees. That’s no longer the case under the Trump Administration. Does that hurt the Hello Future mission?
It’s been very difficult to see recent policies isolate certain communities, individuals, races, ethnicities, including refugees. For anyone to be denied access to a safe haven and for families to have the essential right to remain together is not what our country was founded upon and not what, I believe, we still stand for today.
This situation, however, makes Hello Future all the more important. We are working to empower these teens to take their lives into their own hands so that they can advocate for themselves and change their future.
Is NYC doing enough to help Syrian refugees?
New York City is doing more than many other areas of the country in their efforts to protect refugees and their families, specifically pointing to their efforts to provide legal services to migrant children. But we can always do more. The spirit of immigration is part of New York City. We should honor that and reflect that in our actions and policies.
Lastly, what are your goals for Hello Future?
Now that we’ve completed a successful pilot for Hello Future, we are actively fundraising for both the next session this fall and to expand our work for the long term and in additional locations. Our expansion plan has us working in multiple refugee camps in two countries by 2020. We are seeking and structuring partnerships both public and private.
By Anthony Noto for New York Business Journal, Sep 21, 2018, Read Full Article Here.