going to talk to you today about
creating and building momentum about a
year ago on the first of March 2016 I
appeared on the BBC live news on
prime-time television to provide expert
opinion and views and knowledge about
the Calais camp in France just a few
months before that my life looked very
different from that I was working 70
hours a week in an unrelated day job
hardly ever set foot outside of the
office I had never personally been to
the Calais camp at that time and I’d
certainly never been invited to provide
expertise and knowledge on in major
media outlets so how on earth did that
happen well I believe it’s about
creating and building momentum around a
cause that you truly believe in my story
began just a few months before that on
the so-called international human rights
day in December 2015 when I posted on
Facebook as you do I was frustrated with
in action of the French and British
government’s these are be the human
suffering in the Calais camp on the UK’s
doorsteps I also felt that there was
something very concrete missing in the
citizen response in our response I felt
that there was a gap that someone needed
to fill so posted on Facebook and the
response was really overwhelming I heard
from a large number of people from
across my network all of whom wanted to
join me in whatever plans I had in mind
um so I gotcha I had to do a bit of
thinking I had to do a mapping exercise
to see what other organizations were
already doing and what that missing
piece of the puzzle really was and I
found that there was a striking absence
of reliable facts and figures relating
not only to the Calais camp but also the
situation of refugees across Europe
there was no reliable evidence about the
specific challenges people
facing or about the reasons they had
come to Europe or to Calais why they
wanted to come to the UK and also more
generally we didn’t know much about
people’s dreams and aspirations so I
thought we needed to fill this gap and I
brought together a number of people in a
strategic planning meeting a number of
professionals qualified people from a
variety of sectors and we started
teasing out the objectives of the
project we thought about potential
partners in the field and we started
planning our first trip to the Calais
camp to set up a data collection study
about ten days later we had a branding
we had a website we had Twitter we had
facebook and we had a large social media
following the refugee rights data
project was born and what had begun as a
mere a small idea in my head had become
reality a month later the researcher
started arriving in the cali camp and
the research study could commence and
one might ask oneself how did we manage
to build this momentum so rapidly i
believe there were three key components
the first one being fearlessness okay so
you need to acknowledge your fears be it
fears of failure fears of losing control
fears of losing money or fears of actual
risks and dangers but you mustn’t let
these fears stop you from going ahead
with the plans you have in mind and
based on this idea I i took that the
very last of my small savings and the
very little free time I had and I
invested all of this in this idea
fearlessly okay so I rented a couple of
vehicles and identified some potential
drivers bought a pair of rubber boots I
got some 20 return coach tickets for
researchers to travel to Calais I flew
in a research coordinator from the
Syrian camp
in Lebanon and another human rights
expert I flew in from Italy at this
point my sister told me that was
absolutely crazy and I suppose she was
absolutely right in fact however
surrounded by a fantastic new team of
newly recruited researchers and other
team members I went ahead fearlessly and
with great determination that we must
and can succeed and that brings me to
the second key component that I believe
we need if we are to sustain the
momentum and that is trust you see in
order to keep the energy levels up you
need to empower others to join you you
need to make sure that you put your
trust in people and in their abilities
to take on great responsibilities to
lead and to thrive to give you one
example of how i worked with this
principle is I was well during my first
time in the cali camp I was sitting in
one of the cafes in the camp the cafe i
believe was called the three idiots i
was sitting there and i met two students
Karen and Musashi we got talking about
the project and I could instantly feel
how genuinely passionate they were about
the cause and and what great potential
they seem to have and before I knew it I
had made karen and Musashi the two key
field coordinators for the pilot study
in the Calais camp I took a leap of
faith in them and I never looked back by
putting my trust in them and by making
them feel empowered making them feel
that I believed in their capacity to
lead I saw them excel in their roles I
saw them thrive and it’s exactly this
kind of energy you need to keep your
momentum going however I think there’s a
third key component that we need to bear
in mind and that is agility so whatever
you’ve set in motion whatever project
you’ve started up is bound to start
losing speed at some point or even come
to a halt if it needs external
resistance right
and that’s when you need to not just
keep pushing forward but you also need
to be agile and take decisive decisions
to successfully navigate external
changes in your external environment
things that are outside of your own
control in the early days of the refugee
rights data project we had to rely a lot
on agility and conscious decisions to
adapt to the external environment for
example as we were planning that the
pilot study we suddenly heard that the
southern part of the camp was going to
be completely demolished during the week
of our planned research study so we had
to move the entire operations an entire
week forward to make sure that the
operations could go ahead successfully
and so we did another example is when
the BBC phoned me up for that first
interview at that point we hadn’t
actually processed or analyzed all of
the data from Calais which meant that I
would have very little to talk about
because that was the whole point of the
interview book so I phoned up the our
statistical analyst and I said look
Mohamed I really need some data can we
please can we produce and release some
preliminary facts he saw the importance
in this and we released some preliminary
data that I was able to take with me to
seize the opportunity and to keep the
momentum going and those are just some
of the examples of how we adapted to
external conditions with a lot of
agility allowing us to keep up momentum
okay so that was my personal experience
creating and building momentum based on
fearlessness trust and agility but
needless to say all of this needs to be
underpinned by a genuine passion ok so
my passion as you would have figured at
this point it was my long-standing
belief that all humans are born equal
and deserve a fighting chance if you’ve
been persecuted you’ve lived through a
war or extreme poverty
you’re entitled to a second chance and
protection and Europe can and must
provide that protection as human beings
we have responsibilities to stand up for
fellow humans and I’m convinced that all
of you can do the same you can go out
and create and build momentum around the
course that you believe in something
that you are passionate about and I’m
going to leave you with a quote by
Amelia Earhart the first woman to fly
solo across the Atlantic she said the
most effective way to do it is to do it
thank you very much [Applause]