Jusoor is delighted to invite you to attend our 5th Annual Global Conference
#RefugeesWelcome: Canada’s Response to the Syrian Crisis and the Road Ahead
University of Toronto, Rotman School of Management
October 14th, 2017 | 8:30 AM – 4:10 PM
Followed by a fundraising gala dinner and art auction at the King Edward Hotel

As the Syrian conflict enters its 7th year, thousands of Syrians have been forced to flee their homes for refuge in other countries. Since November 2015, Canada has resettled 40,000 Syrian refugees into Canada. Jusoor’s Fifth Annual Global Conference focuses on Canada’s response to the Syrian crisis.
Our aim is to provide a space for the sharing and cultivation of ideas — to engage corporations, non-profit organizations, community organizers, and established Syrian communities in North America and around the world so that we can collectively learn from challenges, scale successes and mobilize support.
The conference will focus on the following themes:
Social Integration and Inclusion through Higher Education Opportunities
Integration through the educational system is vital for any refugee. In Canada, the chance to partake in the educational system helps newcomers get a more holistic understanding of the Canadian system, and provides a solid basis upon which refugees can acquire local experience and knowledge. School-aged refugees adapt much faster and more smoothly into their new homes because their school experience plays a huge part in their integration. However, access for refugees to higher education opportunities in Canada is proving to be a difficult endeavor. Many young, ambitious Syrians who were once studying in their home country now find themselves on new shores facing a new and daunting set of challenges.
Keeping these challenges in mind, we will be bringing higher education providers, private organizations and the Syrian refugee community together in a conversation about how to realize the academic success of refugees. By doing so, we will highlight the progress that has been made in helping Syrian refugees access higher education opportunities, while also exploring new ideas and initiatives to improve their integration and inclusion in society.
Opportunities and Challenges to Economic Integration
Canada admits Syrian refugees on the basis of compassion rather than economic class. It is safe to say that economic integration is often difficult for many immigrants to Canada, let alone refugees who have been forced to often leave behind their country and homes with very little. The speedy economic integration of Syrians into the workforce is often affected by such things as a lack of language skills and networks, the difficulty of transferring job qualifications across borders, legal constraints, and a lack of how job searches work in other countries. The conference will address these issues and will look at innovative measures currently being used to overcome these challenges.
Presenting Thriving Social Integration Solution and Case Studies
By harnessing the power of partnerships and the diversity of Canadian society, Jusoor aims to tackle one the most pressing issues of our time—how to help a generation of youth affected by war– by creating a space to share and cultivate ideas, engage stakeholders, and mobilize a response. This series of workshops will use real case studies to discuss and further develop ideas related to Youth Led Initiatives in Supporting Higher Education, Private Sponsorship Models and the Best Practices in Social Integration. By looking at the real-life stories of students, academics, corporations, non-profit organizations, community organizers, innovators, and members of civil society as they address the crisis of refugee integration, we hope to create more effective alliances and to find new ways to empower new generations of Syrian youth for a brighter tomorrow—for refugees in Canada and around the world.
Similar to our last four global conferences — New York in 2012, London in 2013, LA in 2015, and Berlin in 2016 — we expect this conference to draw over 200 participants from around the world, including Syrian leaders in all fields as well as students. We very much hope you will be able to join us.
Conference Program
Please click here to view the attachment.
Panel 1: Social Integration and inclusion through higher education opportunities
This panel will discuss the following questions:
- In what ways can higher education facilitate social and cultural integration for a newcomer?
- How are Canada’s higher education providers dealing with the influx of student refugees? What are the opportunities for growth in terms of the current initiatives or in new initiatives?
- How can student refugees be assisted in accessing higher education? Are there any possible ideas or initiatives to facilitate access?
- How can non-profit organizations and higher education providers collaborate towards improving access to student refugees?
Panel 2: Opportunities and challenges to economic integration
Key questions that will be addressed:
- What are the primary challenges that need to be addressed to facilitate the economic integration of newcomers?
- What innovative measures can we implement to speed the process of refugee economic empowerment?
- What routes can Syrians use to achieve self-sufficiency? What is the most efficient strategy for Syrians to transition into the workforce?
- How can we assist newcomers with entrepreneurship mindsets to establish profitable businesses subject to the challenges at hand? How can we make economic resources more accessible to Syrians?
By harnessing the power of partnerships and the diversity that is characteristic of Canadian society, Jusoor aims to tackle one the most pressing issues of our time by providing a space for sharing and cultivating idea, engaging all stakeholders to learn from challenges and successes and mobilize knowledge.
The conference workshop segment brings unique stories within the resettlement arena, submitted by students, academics, corporations, non-profit organizations, community organizers, developers, innovators, and/or members of the community who will be presenting innovative case studies and real life experiences that have successfully contributed to newcomers social integration. Workshop formats are designed to be interactive, sharing successes, from conception to implementation.
Youth Led Initiatives
In this workshop, we will hold an intimate discussion with students and youth who have started initiatives for refugees in higher education. Through our discussions, we hope to tackle some pertinent issues related to student life today.
- First and foremost, how can we build models where a multiplier effect can be realized—where students who were once in need become activists who are now on the giving end?
- What drives and ensures sustainability of youth-led initiatives, including maintaining volunteers?
- What inspired students to take action?
- What are challenges that are particular to youth-led initiatives and what support is needed for them to thrive?
- What assumptions did the youth find to be untrue about the students they were trying to help or their method of program implementation? And what outcomes were unexpected?
These are just some of the questions that we might tackle as we aim to better facilitate the social and cultural integration of newcomers to higher education settings.
The Private Sponsorship Model, a Deep Dive
Across Canada, the private sponsorship of refugee families is one of the most popular ways of resettlement. Churches, Mosques, Synagogues, private groups and even individual families are adopting refugee families. By hearing from the real experiences of sponsors and resettled families, we hope to delve deep into the frustrations and successes of the private sponsorship model.
Through an honest discussion with these families and individuals, we hope to find new ways to help new families and sponsors adapt to the ever changing needs of these two groups. This workshop will try to assess the best practices of the private sponsorship model.
- How can a sponsor both help, while also guide a family toward complete independence?
- What happens if a family has not achieved independence within 6 months or a year?
- How can sponsors help when families are worried about extended family members who are still in conflict areas or maybe in camps?
- How do new-coming families feel could be enhanced about the private-sponsorship system? And what did they most appreciate about it?
Best Practices in Social Integration
This workshop will focus on the best practices of social integration of refugees by inviting leaders from local NGOs, resettlement agencies, university campuses, and community groups to discuss the best practices of social integration.
- What are the barriers to social integration?
- How has integration been successful while respecting the newcomers’ native culture?
- How has a community mobilized to take action towards integration? And how does that look when done by the host community versus the incoming one?
- What are the best models of social integration, including for different age groups and genders?
- While students and those who join the workforce are often first to integrate—what about those who are often left at home to take care of the kids?
- What is the goal here, and where are the gaps?
Through our competitive disruptor labs, we will look at innovative solutions to the challenges facing refugees (in Canada and internationally) by inviting entrepreneurs, developers and innovators to submit their innovative solutions to social problems. Applicants must submit their applications online and must have at least reached the prototype phase. Finalists will present their work at the conference and compete for innovation awards in three categories of Education and Learning, Career and Economic Development, and Policy Disruption.
Education and Learning
A generation of youth is bound to be lost forever as they slip into an education gap. Children have been denied the right to primary school and teens to university. Education is the surest way to economic prosperity, dignity, and long term wellbeing. What are innovators doing to disrupt what is already being done to bridge the gap refugees are facing? This is not about increasing funding or capacity for existing methods to educate refugees per se. This is about finding existing methods, their flaws and inefficiencies, and then disrupting them. What disruptive minds out there are tackling this issue and what have they come up with?
Career and Economic Development
Career success is empowerment, for an individual and her or his entire family. When persons are displaced from their homes and countries, whether it’s a limbo period in refugee camps, or slipping into poverty upon resettlement in another country, refugees face hardships economically and find it extremely challenging to shatter the barrier of steel. We’ve seen a great deal of government programs and community initiatives to help displaced persons stand up on their feet and make ends meet; whether they are job boards, mentorship programs, or resume workshops. What more can be done? Who is thinking outside the box?
Policy Disruption
Entrepreneurship is bottom-up. And it works. Policy, on the other hand, is top-down. It works too. Whether it’s disrupting the policy framework in refugee camps or changing the policies in host governments, the inner spark of a refugee will remain forever in the darkness if policies are not supportive. How do we evaluate policies that are favorable to refugees? How can we come up with result-oriented policies that bring about immediate change and how do we ensure they are implemented?
Submit your Disruptors Lab Proposal

Associate Dean of Student Affairs & Learning and Associate Professor of Middle East and Islamic History, Wilfrid Laurier University
Gavin Brockett
×Gavin Brockett
Associate Dean of Student Affairs & Learning and Associate Professor of Middle East and Islamic History, Wilfrid Laurier University
Dr. Gavin Brockett is Associate Dean of Student Affairs & Learning and Associate Professor of Middle East and Islamic History at Wilfrid Laurier University. Dr. Brockett received his doctoral training as a historian in the interdisciplinary Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at the University of Chicago. Prior to that, he studied at Simon Fraser University and the University of Victoria. He is the faculty advisor for ISWO, a unique student-led humanitarian initiative that originated in the classroom in 2013, with a vision to foster genuine intercultural learning and effective global citizenship by bringing together minds from around the world. With a mission to promote active student engagement through the study of the human realities of international conflict today as well as to provide scholarships to international students affected by conflict, Dr. Brockett is closely familiar with the challenges and opportunities that stake, and the value of social integration via education.

Global Education in Emergencies Specialist, IIE
Katherine Miller
×Katherine Miller
Global Education in Emergencies Specialist, IIE
Katherine Miller is the Global Education in Emergencies Specialist for the Institute of International Education’s PEER (Platform for Education in Emergencies Response) program. A graduate of Tufts University with a bachelors in English, Katherine went on to complete a masters degree in social work at the University of Southern Maine. There she specialized in clinical social work with a focus on trauma therapy with refugees. Katherine began work at IIE as a finance and operations manager in 2014 before transitioning into her current position.

Co-Founder & Chair, Sonbola
Massa Mufti-Hamwi
×Massa Mufti-Hamwi
Co-Founder & Chair, Sonbola
Over the past 22 years, Massa Mufti has accumulated a substantive depth of diversified knowledge and experience in the field of education and learning across educational institutions in the US, Lebanon, and Syria. She is highly engaged in Syrian civil society and in supporting Syrian refugees in the field of Education. Massa is the co-founder and Chair of Sonbola Group For Education & Development (SONBOLA), an NGO that provides education support for Syrian refugee children in Lebanon. She is also a consultant at ESCWA on Education for Syria and has been involved in various consultancy projects relating to education management and reform as well as in research projects that address Emergency Education, NFE, Interactive and Museum-based Learning, and Citizenship Education. Massa is a certified trainer in Education in Emergencies-INEE (Beirut, 2013), in Executive Management and Leadership from Harvard Business School (2011), and in Public Speaking (London, 2011). She holds a Master’s Degree in French Literature from Catholic University in Washington DC and Master’s in Education Policies and Leadership from AUB.

Biochemical Engineering Student, Ryerson University
Roua Alkadi
×Roua Alkadi
Biochemical Engineering Student, Ryerson University
Roua was born in Sweida and raised in Damascus, Syria. Her undergraduate studies in Syria were interrupted when the conflict worsened and made it impossible for her to stay in the country. Upon fleeing to the US with a visitor’s visa, she was faced with university fees that her family could not afford to pay. Desperate for a new beginning, she left for Canada, where she was granted permanent residence. Roua received a Jusoor scholarship in 2016 to pursue undergraduate studies at Ryerson University in Biochemical Engineering.

Associate Professor of International Development and Global Studies, University of Ottawa
Nadia Abu-Zahra
×Nadia Abu-Zahra
Associate Professor of International Development and Global Studies, University of Ottawa
Dr. Nadia Abu-Zahra is Associate Professor of International Development and Global Studies and a member of the Human Rights Research and Education Centre at the University of Ottawa. She researches and teaches on social movements, human rights, ethics, international development, and particularly mobility: immigration, refugees, family class immigration, youth and community resilience. Dr. Abu-Zahra co-facilitates the University of Ottawa’s Distance-Learning Certificate Program in Community Mobilisation in Crisis, to be offered in Lebanon to students adversely affected by the conflict in Syria.
Prior to joining the University of Ottawa, Dr. Abu-Zahra was a Research Fellow at the University of Oxford’s Refugee Studies Centre, and a SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of British Columbia. She has also worked in the nongovernmental sector in education and environmental health. Dr. Abu-Zahra has served as a consultant to the Senate, RCMP (for international development and human rights promotion), and as an expert advisor to the Canadian Immigration and Refugee Board.
She serves on the Reconciliation Committee of the Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences, and was an elected Director on the Federation’s Board from 2011 to 2015. She has also been elected, from 2009 to the present, to the Board of the Group of 78, a Canadian association that promotes peace, justice and sustainability in foreign policy, and the International Editorial Board of the Arab World Geographer. Dr. Abu-Zahra is a frequent commentator in the media, and for organisations such as Amnesty International, on human rights issues. She obtained her DPhil from the University of Oxford in Geography, specialising in freedom of movement and refugee studies, and her MA and BA from the University of Toronto.

Canada Partnerships Advisor, Talent Beyond Boundaries
Dana Wagner
×Dana Wagner
Canada Partnerships Advisor, Talent Beyond Boundaries
Dana Wagner is Canada Partnerships Advisor with Talent Beyond Boundaries, which works to open new pathways to international employment for refugees. She previously worked with independent senator Ratna Omidvar, the Global Diversity Exchange and Maytree. She is a co-author of Flight and Freedom: Stories of Escape to Canada, a board member of the Refugee Career Jumpstart Project, and co-founder of the non-partisan political fact-checker FactsCan. She has worked in Toronto, Ottawa, Hanoi, and Nairobi.
×Jim Estill
CEO,
Jim Estill,
CEO of Danby Appliances is a Canadian technology entrepreneur, executive, and philanthropist. Jim started a computer distribution business from the trunk of his car while in university. That modest business grew into a company doing $350,000,000 in sales before selling to SYNNEX in 2004. Jim then became CEO of SYNNEX Canada and grew sales from $800,000,000 to $2 Billion over five years.
Jim has invested in, mentored and advised many technology companies including Blackberry. He joined their board before they went public and served for 13 years.
In 2016 & 2017 Jim Estill has been making news for his sponsorship efforts to settle 58 Syrian refugee families. The
Financial Times,
BBC News,
The Guardian, and
Toronto Life have all covered his story, including this viral video featuring his work. Jim was awarded the Order of Ontario, the provinces highest honour, in 2017. He is a multiple nominee of the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award.

Distinguished Visiting Professor, Special Adviser to the President, Ryerson University
Karim Bardeesy
×Karim Bardeesy
Distinguished Visiting Professor, Special Adviser to the President, Ryerson University
Karim is a public service leader who has worked at the intersection of public policy, politics, journalism and academia for the last 15 years. He is a Distinguished Visiting Professor and Special Adviser to the President at Ryerson University in Toronto, where he is launching the new Ryerson Leadership Institute. He was previously Deputy Principal Secretary for the Premier of Ontario, the Hon. Kathleen Wynne, and served as Executive Director of Policy for Premiers Wynne and Dalton McGuinty. Karim was a DiverseCity fellow with the Greater Toronto CivicAction Alliance. He has a B.A. from McGill University, and an M.P.P. from Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government.

Professor of Sociology and Dean of St. John’s College, University of Manitoba
Lori Wilkinson
×Lori Wilkinson
Professor of Sociology and Dean of St. John’s College, University of Manitoba
Lori Wilkinson is a professor of Sociology at the University of Manitoba, Dean of St John’s College, editor of the Journal of International Migration and Integration and Director of Immigration Research West. She specializes in studies of racism, settlement, and health among refugees and immigrants. Her current work examines the resettlement experiences of refugees, the health and wellbeing of refugee children and their families, and the experiences of Indigenous students in post-secondary education. In 2017, she won the Teaching Excellence Award from the University of Manitoba and the Fellow of the Year for St John’s College in recognition of her teaching and research work.

Executive Director, Quinte Immigration Services
Orlando Ferro
×Orlando Ferro
Executive Director, Quinte Immigration Services
With over 15 years working in the nonprofit sector as an NGO administrator, Orlando has an extensive knowledge of Government programs and mandates, having been actively involved with research and advocacy for legislation impacting the implementation and delivery of programs more effectively.
Orlando has participated in the past in the Ontario and Federal Annual Budget consultations representing the regional immigration sector and has actively contributed to sectorial consultations towards policy and advocacy involving labour market and economic development trends, employment insurance, social assistance, pensions, education, health care, housing, taxation, regional economic development, equity, diversity, human rights, Law and immigration.
Under Orlando’s oversight, the Quinte Local Immigration Partnership was established in 2007 and today more than 52 stakeholders are part of the council including the three levels of government.
Orlando was also the founder of the Central Eastern Ontario Translation and Interpretation Services in 2005, a social enterprise part of Quinte Immigration services providing interpretation and translation services for the government, hospitals, the court services and many nonprofit stakeholders throughout Ontario.
Presently Orlando is developing and implementing an agricultural pilot project under Quinte United Immigration services, with funds from the Canadian Red Cross, that will train and facilitate Syrian refuges to access the agricultural labour market and entrepreneurship in Ontario.
Orlando has a foreign university degree in Law and Business Administration.
×John Troy
Mayor, Toronto
Born and raised in Toronto, Mayor Tory has spent his career giving back to the city. He began his career practicing law in Toronto, and he was later elected as a managing partner of one of Canada’s biggest law firms. In the 1980s he served as Principal Secretary to Premier Bill Davis and as Associate Secretary of the Ontario Cabinet. He has served as Commissioner of the Canadian Football League and as CEO of Rogers, one of the country’s largest cable companies. His time in politics dates back to 2004 when he was chosen to lead the Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario, later serving as Leader of the Official Opposition at Queen’s Park.
Since being elected to office in 2014, Troy has been focused on ensuring Toronto remains a livable and affordable city, leading City Council in passing successive budgets that kept taxes at or below the rate of inflation while investing in priority services including housing, parks and student nutrition. He has worked to make the city government more modern and effective, to deliver better services at a more competitive price, and to be more open and accountable to the public. As the 65th Mayor of Toronto, John Tory has led the way in tackling traffic congestion and building transit.
×Lara Setrakian
News Deeply
Lara is an award-winning journalist, strategist and entrepreneur. She spent five years in the Middle East reporting via television, radio and digital platforms for ABC News, Bloomberg Television, the International Herald Tribune, Business Insider and Monocle magazine. Her 2009 coverage of Iran’s election protests and the Arab Awakening of 2011 garnered industry praise. Lara is a Young Global Leader with the World Economic Forum and a Term Member of the Council on Foreign Relations. She graduated magna cum laude from Harvard University, with a degree in government.
×Leen Al Zaibak
Jusoor
Leen is a Senior Policy Advisor for Policy Planning and Coordination at the Office of International Relations and Protocol for the province of Ontario. Previously, she served as a Policy Advisor to the Ontario Minister of Children and Youth Services. Leen holds an Honors Bachelor of Arts from the University of Toronto, Trinity College and a Master of Arts in International Relations from the University of Manchester. She is a leader in supporting Syrian refugees resettled in Canada to succeed, and directs Jusoor’s partnerships and programs in Canada.

Co-Founder, Attollo Social Enterprise
Aisha Bukhari
×Aisha Bukhari
Co-Founder, Attollo Social Enterprise
Aisha is an engineer with a background in business and policy. She enjoys work that involves creating a positive social impact, leading change and developing integrative solutions. She is passionate about clean energy, innovation, and social justice. Aisha spent the formative part of her career at Toronto Hydro, where she worked in both engineering and business development roles. She is a co-founder of an education technology startup, Attollo Social Enterprise. Aisha holds a BASc in electrical engineering from the University of Toronto, an MEng in electric power engineering from the University of Waterloo and an MBA from Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto. She also serves on the advisory committee for the Women in Renewable Energy (WiRE) non-profit.

Co-Founder and CEO, Peekapak
Ami Shah
×Ami Shah
Co-Founder and CEO, Peekapak
Ami is the co-founder and CEO of Peekapak. Peekapak is an award-winning education technology company teaching young students social and emotional skills like gratitude, empathy, respect and teamwork in the classroom and at home. Housed on an easy-to-use online platform, Peekapak engages and empowers over 12,000 educators in 90 countries to reach over 150,000 students.
This fall, over 775 classrooms (13k+ students) will be using Peekapak’s new online game world, myPeekaville. In myPeekaville, students become a Peekapak character and practice new social and emotional skills through targeted quests and mini-games. Students are encouraged to ‘check-in’ daily by selecting how they’re feeling, providing teachers with a heatmap of student sentiment. Behind-the-scenes, teachers receive real-time data showing a student’s comprehension, progress and emotions. myPeekaville is filled with diverse characters representing a variety of cultures, talents and socio-economic backgrounds, which offer relatable role-models to all students.
Peekapak is backed by; Silicon Valley based accelerator, Imagine K12, the Edtech vertical of Y Combinator (Fast Company called YC “the world’s most powerful start-up incubator”), JOLT (a Canadian accelerator within Toronto’s MaRS Discovery District) and Uncharted (formerly Unreasonable Institute, a Denver, Colorado-based incubator for companies focused on social impact).

Director of Startup Services, DMZ
Hussam Ayyad
×Hussam Ayyad
Director of Startup Services, DMZ
Hussam Ayyad joined the DMZ — North America’s top university based incubator — as Director of Startup Services in June 2016. He leads a team that designs and oversees the DMZ’s startup resources, exclusive programs and outreach partnerships. This all-encompassing portfolio means he works closely with the DMZ’s roster of high-growth startups located around the world and plays a pivotal role in helping them scale.
Prior to his current role, he worked at Waterloo-based innovation center Communitech as its Startup Services Group Manager where he advised, coached and supported over 100 technology startups. In this position he led the customer acquisition and strategic partnership programs that provided unique opportunities for entrepreneurs and high-growth tech ventures to acquire Fortune 500 companies and other large enterprises as early adopters, clients or strategic partners.
Throughout his professional career, Ayyad has held a variety of business leadership roles in banking, IT, shipping and metal recycling that range from working as a web developer and system analyst at Sun Life Toronto and the Commercial Bank of Dubai, respectively, to co-founding and leading the growth of Algéro Canadian Metals to an internationally recognized organization.
His bachelor of software engineering from the University of Western Ontario and master of business entrepreneurship and technology (MBET) from the University of Waterloo have provided him with the technical skills needed to thrive in the changing world of tech. As an entrepreneur and experienced business executive, he uses knowledge and experience gained through two decades in the technology sector and growing businesses to help Canadian startups reach new heights.
×Rama Chakaki
Co-Founder, VIP.fund
Rama applies 25 years of technical and communications experience to her passion: social development for Arab Youth. She runs VIP.fund with her co-founder Brian David, a venture philanthropy fund investing in youth programs and technology startups. Additionally, Rama is a principal with Turn8, a Tech Venture Capital Fund. Prior to the VIP.fund Rama ran Baraka Ventures, investing in a portfolio of social impact and tech startups. In 2000 Rama co-founded a startup that received $60,000 in funding to build out data-centers and served as a director of product development at Cable and Wireless serving fortune 100 clients. She holds a bachelor’s degree in Computer Engineering and a Master’s in Engineering Management from George Washington University. Rama served on the board of TechWadi, PCRF, PACES, The Impact HUB – UAE , Challenge to Change and Nakhweh. She’s a founding member of Arab Women in Computing and the first regional Women Angel investment Network – WAIN, and currently serves on the board of the Syrian International Business Association.

Co-Founder, Visualizing Impact
Ramzi Jaber
×Ramzi Jaber
Co-Founder, Visualizing Impact
Ramzi is the cofounder of Visualizing Impact (VI), an interdisciplinary organization that specializes in data visualization, technology and data journalism creating visual stories on social issues .
www.visualizingimpact.org. Ramzi is also cofounder of
onlinecensorship.org (OC), a platform that promotes transparency and accountability of the major social media platforms (Twitter, Facebook, Google, etc). Ramzi has been selected as a Young Global Leaders by the
World Economic Forum. During the Spring of 2012 he was a fellow at
Stanford University’s Center for Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law as a
Social Entrepreneur-in-Residence. Ramzi is also an
Ashoka Fellow , has been featured by
Creative Commons and part of the 2016 Ford- Mozilla Tech Exchange program. For two years in a row, Ramzi has been selected as one of the
100 most influential young Arabs. Ramzi’s work has been featured in
CNN,
BBC,
Fortune,
Policy Mic,
Foreign Policy ,
Fast Company,
Jazeera,
Open Democracy,
Stanford Daily,
Global Voices,
Guardian and has given talks at
Google Mountain view and a
TEDx Talk at TEDxSummit in Doha.

Founder and CEO, The Rumie Initiative
Tariq Fancy
×Tariq Fancy
Founder and CEO, The Rumie Initiative
Tariq founded The Rumie Initiative after a notable career at the intersection of finance, technology, and emerging markets. His successful business career and unique decision to found Rumie has been chronicled in extensive case studies published by both Harvard Business School and INSEAD Business School.
Rumie is a non-profit organization with a simple mission: to bring the free digital learning revolution to offline, remote, and underserved communities around the world. Today, it’s active in more than twenty countries, working with partners like UNICEF, Junior Achievement, Right to Play and Pencils of Promise to transform education for underserved youth.
Rumie is backed by the Silicon Valley accelerator that also produced Airbnb and Dropbox (Y-Combinator), is based at Canada’s #1 incubator (DMZ), and won the Google Impact Prize in 2017. An in-depth Harvard Business School case study on the Rumie model is now taught around the world.
Why Canada?
Since November 2015, Canada has resettled 40,000 Syrian refugees through their refugee protection programs. And over the last two years Canada has received great international recognition for its treatment of refugees; many, in fact, have begun to take notice and are tracking the progress and best practices of resettlement from the Canadian perspective. Furthermore, the tone of the Canadian government has helped legitimize the cause of refugees and spurred Canadian citizens to play a direct role in the resettlement effort.
What has been particularly phenomenal is the role that private sponsorship groups have played in the process. In 2016, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees Countries applauded Canada for being the first country among a handful of states to allow private groups to take on the costs and obligations associated with refugee resettlement. Such a move has allowed volunteer activities and citizen-led initiatives to flourish, and pushed individuals and organizations to find innovative and out-of the-box resettlement solutions and ideas.
For these reasons, Jusoor’s Fifth Annual Global Conference focuses on Canada’s response to the Syrian crisis.
Venue
Jusoor 2017 Conference
October 14, 2017
8:30 AM: Registration opens
9:00 AM – 4:10 PM: Conference
Desautels Hall (Second Floor, South Building)
Rotman School of Management
University for Toronto
105 St George Street
Toronto, ON M5S 3E6
Canada
- To get to the conference by public transportation:
The nearest subway stations are St. George, Museum and Spadina.
- Vehicle Access:
Paid parking is available at the underground parking for the Rotman School of Business at $4.00/ half hour and $20.00 Maximum until 10pm. The entrance is located on St. George Street, just south of Sussex.
- Wheelchair access:
The building is wheelchair accessible at the main, southwest, rear, and secondary rear entrances.
- Bicycle Parking:
Bike racks are available for use near the main entrance of the building.
Jusoor 2017 Fundraising Gala and Art Auction
October 14, 2017
6 PM: Reception
7 PM: Dinner
Omni King Edward Hotel
37 King Street East
Toronto, Ontario M5C 1E9
Canada
Hotels
Jusoor has reserved blocks of rooms for two nights (October 13 and 14, 2017) for those attending our conference in the hotels listed below:
Holiday Inn Toronto Bloor Yorkville
Website: www.hitorontoblooryorkville.ca
Phone: +1-416-968-0010
Booking code: TJ5
Rate: One queen bed for CAD $169.99 + tax, single/double occupancy; two double beds: CAD $179.99 + tax, single/double occupancy
Omni Hotels Reservations
Website: ssl.omnihotels.com/Omni (please use Chrome, FireFox, or Safari)
Phone: +1-800-843-6664
Business hours: 8am to 1am EST
Booking code: 1710JUSOOR
For partnership and sponsorship opportunities please contact
Thanks to our Media Partner


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