How are things in Damascus?
When you enroll in a course on entrepreneurship,
you don’t immediately think of collaborating
with Syria, but it is at the center of this
class at Case Western Reserve University.
I had only known what I read in the newspapers or watched on television and most of the preconceptions
I had were negative because of the conflict
that was going on.
When I first heard that we were going to be
contacting Syrian entrepreneurs, I definitely
was a little bit hesitant.
So why Syria?
It all stems from the massive open online
course “Beyond Silicon Valley”
that Professor Michael Goldberg developed
with support from the Burton D. Morgan Foundation
and then extended to undergraduates as an
in-person course.
The online version has drawn more than 175-thousand
students around the world.
One of my students based in Damascus, Syria
was excited to organize a small cohort of
students that would take the course alongside
our Case Western Reserve University students.
Students from both countries shared ideas
in live discussion forums and online conversations
and learned about each other, not only as
entrepreneurs but as people.
There are many challenges Syrian entrepreneurs are facing.
Some of them are relative to the conflict
and circumstances in Syria.
And some are faced by any entrepreneur in
the world.
We saw some entrepreneurs that simply had
to give up their business ideas and dreams
at the moment.
Other Syrians had to leave the country as
refugees
Remonda Ibrahem is a Syrian entrepreneur outside
Damascus.
Her father passed away unfortunately in the
conflict.
She decided to start her own kindergarten.
We suffered a lot from the war, but now our
normal lives start to begin again.
All of the students in the class made recommendations
to the entrepreneurs with whom they connected.
They also offered suggestions to the United
Nations Development Program, through a UNDP
officer enrolled in the class.
And I see that this accommodation could be valuable for other countries.
Each day there’s something new that you
weren’t expecting to happen.
For example, we had someone from Kosovo online.
Professor Goldberg knew him from the online
course and saw an opportunity to connect him
to the class.
It was a different perspective for us.
I feel like for the students, while they went
into this kind of wide-eyed wondering what the experience would be
they saw the Syrian entrepreneurs that they were engaging with were people,
people looking to make their country better.
I really appreciated the positive perspective
that Syria isn’t just a war-town country,
but really there’s a lot of good that's coming
from their business-oriented side
and how entrepreneurship is really going to revive that country.
