Samah Shaheen (right), one of Gaza’s many disabled young people, joined the Irada programme to acquire expertise, learn computerised wood carving and escape social marginalisation. Credit: Khaled Alashqar/IPS

By Khaled Alashqar
GAZA CITY, Jan 17 2015 (IPS)

The Israeli attacks that the Gaza Strip has suffered in recent years have left in their wake a large number of young people who have come up against a further barrier to their creative energies – physical disability caused by military aggression.

Institutions here are increasingly facing the challenge of developing rehabilitation programmes to help support these physically disabled Gazan youth cope with living under the existing harsh political, economic and social conditions.

One of these programmes – known as “Irada” (“will” in Arabic) – is providing young people who have been disabled by war with vocational training with the ultimate objective of helping them earn their own livelihoods.

Launched by the Islamic University of Gaza, the Irada programme aims to support, train and reintegrate physically challenged young people in social and economic terms and boost community trust in the abilities of this so far marginalised group. More than 400 persons with all types of disabilities have already received rehabilitation and training.“After I joined the [Irada] programme and learnt computer skills for carving and decoration on wood, I now have a career, earn well and I am seriously thinking of opening a workshop” – Samah Shaheen, a 33-year-old physically disabled woman from Al-Bureij refugee camp

Irada project director Emad Al Masri told IPS that the project concept was initially developed for the massive number of young people who became disabled as a result of the Israeli war against Gaza in 2008. The project received support from the government of Turkey for the building construction to house Irada’s academic and vocational training programmes.

“The basic idea of the project is to help disabled people and reintegrate them into the community and help them to be productive instead of being seen as a burden,” Al Masri said.

Samah Shaheen, a 33-year-old from Al-Bureij refugee camp, has a physical disability that makes it difficult for her to engage in community activities. She joined the Irada programme in an attempt to acquire expertise and learn computerised wood carving. She spent more than six months in training before moving on to practice her new skills within the community under Irada supervision.

“I spent several years of my life jobless due to my disability, and also because I had no experience,” Samah told IPS. “After I joined the [Irada] programme and learnt computer skills for carving and decoration on wood, I now have a career, earn well and I am seriously thinking of opening a workshop because of the overwhelming response to the ornate wood furniture products that I have made.”

Central to the Irada rehabilitation programme is to follow up with the disabled people who have received training after leaving the programme in order to ensure their integration and participation in the labour market.  Part of this follow-up strategy also includes monitoring their progress in the workshops and factories where they are employed, and offering professional support if needed.

Because of its success, the Irada programme has been awarded funding by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) to help programme graduates start up small business projects, develop their economic independence and enhance their production profile.

Tariq Sha’at, NGO Coordinator for UNDP, told IPS that “UNDP allocated 150,000 dollars to establish centres for the production of home furniture throughout the governorates of the Gaza Strip and help 90 disabled trainees to manage their own businesses, continue their lives and reintegrate into the society naturally.”

Adding further success to the promising and successful Irada programme, three female information technology (IT) students from the Islamic University of Gaza have designed the first application to enable visually impaired people to write in Braille language on smart phones in Arabic.

Seen as a major breakthrough, visually impaired people can now download and install the application for performing all operations, including calls and text messaging. It also allows physically impaired people to use smart phones with high efficacy and facilitates communications with people in the wider society.

Dr. Tawfiq Barhom,  Dean of the Faculty of Information Technology, explained to IPS that “this group of female students was able to provide a great service to the community of visually impaired people, in addition to winning a global competition in which the application was selected as one of the five best projects for developers from among 2500 projects.”

Students are now trying to develop this application even further by increasing the number of languages supported to facilitate use by larger groups worldwide. Israa Al Ashqar, one of the students on the project team told IPS that the project came about because of the marginalisation experienced by visually impaired people in society and their increased isolation as a result of their inability to use social media and smart phone applications.

“The application will provide a Braille keyboard for every programme used by visually impaired people on mobile phones which will allow them to use social media and communicate with their community naturally. This will in turn increase the chances for this marginalised group to integrate into local and global society,” she said.

Together, the Irada programme and the Braille smart phone application represent a serious attempt by universities and students in Gaza to support an important section of the community that has not only suffered from wars and traumas but also hopelessness and isolation within Gazan society.

They are a tangible demonstration that the people of Gaza have the will and the talent to work together and develop opportunities, where possible, for an inclusive society.

Edited by Phil Harris   

Khalid Salim (left) and Yassir Younis (right) , owners of the Motawiron mobile applications and software development company that grew out of the Technology Incubator in Gaza. Credit: Khaled Alashqar/IPS

By Khaled Alashqar
GAZA CITY, Jun 19 2014 (IPS)

“After graduating, I joined the thousands of other graduates on the list of the unemployed. Then I read about a project that offers a technology incubator for youth projects, applied, was accepted and now I’m no longer on that list!

Yasser Younis, who is now co-owner of a mobile applications and software development company, was describing his experience of the Palestine Information and Communications Technology Incubator, a unique programme set up and run by the University College of Applied Sciences (UCAS) in Gaza, with the support of Oxfam, which has the ambitious aim of bypassing the blockade imposed on Gaza.

The idea behind the programme is to provide graduate students with the necessary sponsorship and financial support to develop their projects during a gestation period of six months, with project staff on hand to help them network with companies abroad and market their products online.“Ideas are accepted on the basis of specific criteria and the ability of the idea to overcome the blockade on Gaza and market products abroad via the Internet” – Professor Saeed Azzibda, Manager of Development Programmes at UCAS, Gaza

Describing this promising programme, Professor Saeed Azzibda, Manager of Development Programmes at UCAS, told IPS: “Ideas are accepted on the basis of specific criteria and the ability of the idea to overcome the blockade on Gaza and market products abroad via the Internet. If such essential criteria are met, we would embrace the idea and develop it until it becomes a product with foreign trade potential.”

The Technology Incubator qualifies five companies in each assessment session and some of its start-up projects have already developed their own programs and applications that are being sold in the global market of mobile phone software.

The programme has been very well received in the Palestinian community and at international level, with some Arab investors offering successful participants the opportunity to travel and work in Qatar and other Arab countries interested in the field of technology and online markets, or to open headquarters for budding start-ups outside Gaza and increase investment in them.

“We have two dimensions to corporate incubation,” Professor Azzibda told IPS.  “The first is that the company sells its products via the Internet to overcome the blockade of Gaza, and the second dimension is for those students who have created their own companies here to explore opportunities outside the borders of Gaza border and develop strong companies and investments abroad with the aim of also supporting their people in Gaza.”

Two of the graduates from the OCAS programme are Yasser and Khalil Salim, owners of the Motawiron mobile applications and software development company. They graduated from the UCAS programme after six months of incubation and the company is now selling its products online for companies in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and some other countries.

Motawiron recently won a ticket to represent Palestine inthe “Imagine Cup”, the global student technology competition organised by Microsoft Corporation for the best software and applications to serve the world. This was the first time ever that Palestine had been represented in the competition.

Nevertheless, the blockade on Gaza prevented Younis and Salim from travelling earlier this month to Qatar for the Pan-Arab semi-finals of the “Imagine Cup”, although they possessed the necessary papers and the official invitation and tickets.

“Our company has developed the ‘HOPE’ application for mobile phones which helps the deaf communicate with people and integrate into society. We got the first position for Palestine and now compete in the world but we could not travel.  We have shared this application in competitions in order to expand horizons and start relationships with international companies,” Yassir told IPS.

Graduates make up a significant segment of Palestinian society where over 40,000 studentsgraduate each year, creating an urgent need to find creative ways to accommodate young graduates and their talents in the labour market. But the market in Gaza suffers from major weakness and serious decline at various levels because of the continued siege and closures imposed by Israel.

Some international donor organisations, including Oxfam, work in Gaza and try to support domestic markets and the local economy.

They manage large development projects through which they provide significant support to UCAS graduates to deliver their products to the outside world via the internet despite the challenges they face in Gaza, particularly the electricity blackouts for 12 hours a day and the difficulty of bringing in supporting equipment for emerging companies.

“Information technology is among the emerging and promising sectors in Gaza, where products that are blocked from access tomarkets by traditional ways due to the blockade can be offered via the Internet,” Alun Macdonald, Media and Communication Coordinator at Oxfam, told IPS.

“A company producing animated advertising has so far won six contracts outside Gaza with companies in the Gulf states, Canada and Saudi Arabia. Some of the companies have also proved themselves in the local market,” he added.

Meanwhile, young female journalist Nour Al-harazin is taking the media approach in her initiative to overcome physical and political barriers and reach the outside world, by preparing to launch and operate an English-speaking news channel from Gaza via YouTube.

“It would be the first in the Arab world and Palestine.This channel intends to provide reports and human stories from besieged Gaza to the outside world. It will be, for the first time, our right as Palestinians to convey our suffering ourselves to the outside world without any parameters. This is the main idea of the project,” Nour told IPS.

A support network of activists from Western countries is taking shape across social networking sites to help this Palestinian journalist with her project. Having launched an online page for fundraising, Nour has also released a short video on YouTube calling on activists and supporters of justice in the world to provide assistance and financial help for her project so that she can deliver the message of the Palestinians and the people of Gaza in particular.

“The siege and travel ban have always been an obstacle to Palestinians, so I thought of using the Internet and social media to reach out to the world that cannot reach us. The Internet has now become a means to break this siege,” said Nour.

Day after day, Gazans like Nour, Yassir and Khalil continue the struggle to find new ways to break the siege imposed on them and create access to the outside world through commercial relations and media outlets. The global Internet and social media have opened new doors and are now being used as an essential space to challenge closure and isolation.

IT entrepreneur Marwa Sadek, the face of a new Egypt. Credit: Rachel Williamson/IPS.

By Rachel Williamson
CAIRO, Mar 7 2014 (IPS)

The group of buildings near Tahrir Square could be modern campus-style office space anywhere. It’s hard to believe that just outside the heavy steel gates lies downtown Cairo, the noisy, polluted and now troubled heart of Egypt.

The buildings are now a new IT hub called the GrEEK, after its history as a Greek school and its current incarnation as a technology hub, and are the intended nucleus of a rising Egyptian ‘Silicon Alley’.The possibility of disruption from Tahrir Square to business as usual at the tech hub is a continuing reminder here that Egypt is not out of the political woods yet.

The location was the chief attraction for venture capitalist Ahmed Alfi when he decided in 2012 to build an ‘ecosystem’ for tech entrepreneurs.

The campus is close to the junction of the main metro lines and just a few stops from the national train station. Alfi said residents of Greater Cairo and from many of the surrounding cities could be at the business park within an hour and a half.

Alfi has ten tenants already in the office space he lets out, and “four or five” negotiating space, he told IPS.

Rent for a 50-square-metre office can vary from 450 dollars per month to 1,500 dollars on the lower floors. To put that in context, the new minimum wage for public sector workers is 172 dollars a month.

Alfi is clear about his aims for the campus: to give Egypt’s engineers and scientists a place to build technology businesses and thereby boost the sputtering economy. “My interest is its impact on the culture of entrepreneurs and on the Egyptian economy,” said Alfi.

“I don’t feel a responsibility towards the restoration of downtown. I mean, there’s some, but I feel a responsibility towards taking the really, really smart kids here who aren’t part of an ecosystem and getting them to work together and get some dynamism to happen.”

Those “kids” are the much talked of entrepreneurs in Egypt’s tech revolution who are reimagining their country as they want it to be. They are educated, usually bilingual, and tapped into regional entrepreneurial and business networks.

Marwa Sadek, founder of the digital marketing agency 20 Uses, mentored start-ups in Alfi’s Flat6Labs business incubator for the last two years, and couldn’t wait to get involved when she heard about the venture.

“I wanted to be in a place that is a business hub,” she said, having moved into a fashionably spartan second floor office in January. “When all the companies move in, the GrEEK campus is going to be a strong source of economic activity.”

Not only has the exposure to other businesses expanded 20 Uses’ client base, Sadek will soon have all the facilities on site needed to run a business, such as meeting rooms and cafes.

Yassar el-Zahhar chats happily about the plans for his health food start-up to service the geeks on the new campus. “You can smell the success here,” he told IPS. “Being here makes me take the power from the entrepreneurs around me.”

But all the excitement and business acumen inside the campus are unlikely to benefit those working just outside the gates. Continuing political agitation in Tahrir Square is one factor that raises questions just how much positive influence will flow out into the wider community.

Sadek’s main problem is the proximity to the square. She’s had to postpone meetings “three or four times” in the last two months because protests made the campus difficult or dangerous to reach.

Sadek said this would not discourage her from working from the GrEEK. But the possibility of disruption from Tahrir Square to business as usual at the tech hub is a continuing reminder here that Egypt is not out of the political woods yet.

GrEEK seems a world apart from Tahrir Square. The downtown area is “full of nasty people,” said el-Zahhar. “You can’t walk in peace in downtown.”

That means business for his food outlet at the GrEEK haven. “This will be protecting you. Protecting the girls, protecting the nice guys… I don’t think downtown will make any use of us, we are here to make money not spend money.”

Across the road from the GrEEK, Reda Feuad sipped tea in his IT shop as he waited for customers. Feuad doesn’t see the upstarts next door replacing his long-standing relationships with clients around the country.

The generational and educational difference between Feuad and the GrEEK tenants was clear: where Feuad spoke Arabic only and connected with his Egyptian clients via phone and sometimes in person, his new neighbours have regional and international ambitions, speak two or more languages and are constantly available by phone, and email, Facebook and Twitter.

No signs of this are evident yet, but some expect the influx of smart, innovative problem solvers to have some impact on the downtown area.

Heba Gamal, managing director of the economic development NGO Endeavour Egypt, hoped it would revive the community through foot traffic and social interactions with “young, enthusiastic, excited” business leaders.

“I think the downtown culture will be affected because it will want to, I mean smart entrepreneurs will definitely come in and want to tailor to that new segment of clientele that is suddenly available to them,” she said.

GrEEK CEO Tarek Taha is keen to be a good neighbour and has commissioned local carpenters and furniture makers to renovate heritage-listed buildings.

“We clearly understand where we’re located and we want to have an impact within the environment around us… I know this is a really small incremental effect but it’s very important to us.”

By Hazel Henderson
ST. AUGUSTINE, Florida, Dec 17 2013 (Columnist Service)

The debate over structural unemployment, automation and jobless economic growth began in the 1960s as car factories replaced workers with robots.

Futurists like myself saw these technologies taking over sectors of industrial economies as opportunities for a transition to “post-industrial” information and services-based “leisure societies,” and to develop human potential, lifelong learning, research, preventive healthcare, the arts, entertainment, sports and tourism.

Some parts of our vision have materialised: tourism and entertainment are major global industries. Research has produced medical breakthroughs, new sectors based on IT, the internet, 3-D printing and drones as well as democratising education electronically in massive open online courses (MOOCs).

Alas, missing today are our futurist visions which included a key corollary to this IT takeover of work: unconditional guaranteed incomes to provide the needed purchasing power to keep up aggregate demand for this new cornucopia of goods and services. We also held that if workers were replaced by machines, they would need to own a piece of those machines.

Hazel Henderson

This debate is back, as inequality reaches crisis levels in Europe and the U.S. with the share of incomes from increased productivity falling for workers while capital owners’ and executives’ returns soar to new heights. This inequality now leads to further stagnation in many economies.

Guaranteed cash transfers directly to poorer citizens are raising living standards in Mexico’s “Oportunidades” and Brazil’s “Bolsa Familia” payments which have pulled millions up into the middle class.

These payments, called conditional cash transactions (CCTs), only require that children attend school and get medical check-ups. In Europe, the movement for unconditional basic incomes responding to widespread rising structural unemployment has led to widespread demonstrations and to a ballot initiative in Switzerland.

Meanwhile, Silicon Valley IT giants Amazon, Google and others in Japan are targeting more sectors for takeover, as they have disrupted retailing, entertainment, news media, finance and other industries.

Google’s driverless cars will threaten millions of entry-level jobs for people driving taxis and trucks. Computer scientist advisor to Microsoft Jaron Lanier paints the future digital takeover vividly in Who Owns the Future (2013). He calls for a new economy based on digital value-sharing where all personal information given by individuals to Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, Google, LinkedIn or other such firms, be paid for, since this data provides these firms with their key asset.

Selling personal information, using Big Data for marketing, not to mention handing it over to governments, is a basic IT business model.

Google’s next big projects beyond rolling out Google glasses, with all their privacy implications, is producing robots they say will relieve humans from drudgery. This claim has been used by automation enthusiasts for decades.

Economists have also avoided the implications of jobless productivity: recommending more education and re-training, while sidestepping the more controversial examination of laissez faire economic theories. Yet, unemployment faces many graduates, many thousands of whom work as janitors and part-timers. Government policies often redistribute growth unfairly in tax breaks, subsidies to powerful interests in exchange for political contributions.

All these trends revive the big questions asked for decades: what is the purpose of technology? Why does the hare of private sector technology always outrun the tortoise of social innovation? In 1974, the U.S. set up its Office of Technology Assessment (OTA) on which I served, to answer these questions: how would the benefits and impacts of new technologies affect different groups in society, as well as the environment and overall quality of life?

Take Amazon’s plan to deliver packages quickly using drones. How many are benefited by this and how many may be inconvenienced, annoyed or even injured by all these drones in our public air space? For those millions living near Amazon’s massive distribution warehouses, will such a constant plague of these locust drones overhead spoil their quality of life?

Or take the new proposals that drones may be able to take over crop-pollination from bees, whose populations are threatened by hive collapse or nicotinoid pesticides (New Scientist, Nov. 16, 2013, p. 43). Can drones really replace bees to sustain our human food supply? Who benefits and who loses?

OTA asked all these inconvenient questions until it was shut down by Republicans in Congress in 1996. Their view was to leave all such questions to the magic of the marketplace.

Today, as the digital revolution accelerates with drones and robots populating our societies, all these questions re-emerge, as well as who pays. Will Google, Amazon, Facebook, Twitter, et al., begin paying their users for their personal data, or help pay for the guaranteed incomes for those displaced people whose labour is no longer needed? We are now re-connecting all these dots and our future will depend on new answers.
(END/COPYRIGHT IPS)

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