AMMAN — With the goal of supporting refugee populations,
VentureX, a Jordanian firm specializing in launching accelerators for
innovative ideas across the region, established the Jordan Innovation Program
earlier this year.
اضافة اعلان
They did so in partnership with Finnish company Ultrahack,
and supporting partners including Business Finland and Ministry of Foreign
Affairs in Finland.
The program’s main objective is to connect Finnish
tech-companies with local partners (called challenge partners) to tackle major
issues facing refugee populations and vulnerable communities in
Jordan, with a
specific focus on empowering female refugees.
“The challenge partners are experts in the domains we are
addressing ¬— health, education, energy and sanitation — plus those who
interact with refugees and know what their main challenges are,” VentureX
Entrepreneurial Development at Outreach Manager Mira Samman said in an
interview with Jordan News.
After identifying the major challenges facing refugees, in
addition to issues preventing the organizations from supporting these refugees,
they collaborate with the Finnish companies to find solutions, Samman said.
“The Finnish companies have existing solutions, they know
the challenges and the domains, then they tailor their solution as per the
challenge defined by the partner,” Samman explained.
Through a series of webinars and workshops, the outreach
cycle began. “We did an awareness webinar where we worked with Ultrahack and
our partners to identify challenges,” Samman said. “Then there was an
exploration workshop where the matchmaking occurred between the challenge
partners and the businesses given the domain they work in.”
During the exploration workshop, which took place late
March, a total of 12 challenges were presented by five different challenge
partners, and around 40 Finnish companies attended to discuss their solutions.
Among the partners involved in the Jordan Innovation Program
are the Wadi Araba Development Company (WADC), the World Refugee Schools (WRS),
the International Rescue Committee (IRC), the UNFPA, the UNDP, and most
recently, Luminus Education.
Education challenges identified by the WRS, for example,
included integrating refugee children to host education systems and providing
access to online Finnish education, considered to be among the best in the
world, for refugees.
“Our main focus is providing solutions to solve education
problems for refugees,” WRS Director of Partnership Development Zaid Tahabsem
told Jordan News. “One of the things we are looking at is developing our AI
engine to make sure we can easily convert curricula from one educational system
to the other.”
Through their participation in the Jordan Innovation
Program, the WRS was able to connect with Finnish companies and develop
partnerships. They decided to work with a group of these entities in order to
reach the most comprehensive solutions, explained Tahabsem.
“Bringing in a different perspective helps you look at the
situation in a new way, which was what happened with this program,” Tahabsem
said. “At the same time, we got extra resources that believe in our vision and
will bring us closer to achieving our goals over a shorter period of time.”
Currently, the Jordan Innovation Program is working on
planning and implementing these projects, explained Samman. “Anyone in contact
with refugees would benefit from this project — it would create added value for
them,” she said.
The innovative solutions they are working with range from
cost-saving initiatives to ways organizations can use technology to expand
their reach.
“I would highly recommend companies in the region to explore
such programs because in our area of work, it is all about scalability, culture
of diversity and bringing people together,” Tahabsem said.
Read more
Lifestyle
.jpg)
.jpg)
