SOCIAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP AS A TOOL FOR CHANGE

Tiara Ataii (Modern and Medieval Languages, 2016) has experience working in humanitarian response in 14 countries. She writes articles on the topic, which you can find on her website (www.tiarasaharataii.com).

My journey at Cambridge started in more chaotic circumstances than most. I had gained a place to read Music (2016) and intended to spend my gap year before Robinson as an accompanist at music schools across Europe. And I did—but I also ended up spending around eight hours a day volunteering as an interpreter for Afghans who had come to Europe in 2015 and 2016 to seek asylum, and who had ended up in the system’s Kafkaesque legal maze. I would start my day as early as 6am to fill in forms, run to the local authorities in between music lessons, and end at 9pm, having accompanied asylum seekers who had interviews the next day to see a lawyer. Two weeks before I was meant to start lectures, I realised that maybe Music wasn’t what I was going to dedicate my life to. I re-interviewed for Arabic and Middle Eastern Studies. And on the first day of lectures, I heard I had been accepted for my new course.

I began using each holiday to continue volunteering to support asylum seekers through the asylum system, and I was appalled at the quantity and consistency of legal miscarriages. I had grown up with a British passport, and the privileges it provides—like freedom of movement—and I couldn’t envisage a scenario in which those fleeing death and persecution could live under the constant threat of deportation.

So that Lent term, I founded SolidariTee. The idea was that I would sell shirts with art designed by refugees to Cambridge students, which would act as a conversation starter and a fundraiser for lawyers providing legal aid. In just a month I had sold 600 shirts, and I began to think that maybe the idea had relevance outside of Cambridge.

Fast-forward five and a half years: SolidariTee has trained up over 1,000 students in refugee advocacy, we’ve run teams at 60 universities, and we’ve provided almost half a million pounds in grants to NGOs providing legal aid.

It’s the awareness raising and advocacy training I’m by far proudest of. This isn’t to say that the funds we’ve raised aren’t crucial—a refugee who receives SolidariTeefunded legal aid in Greece has a 73% chance of asylum compared to the national average of just 30%. But what I’ve learned over the last five and a half years is that we’re always fire-fighting in the face of increasingly hostile policy towards refugees, often in flagrant violation of international law. Pushbacks (when migrants are forced back over a border by state authorities, usually immediately after having crossed the same border) are now widespread at European borders. SolidariTee is our collective statement that, as the next generation, we reject the proposition that this is the will of Europeans: this is not in our name.

Social entrepreneurship is a key tool in the path of justice and dignity for all, but it needs to be paired with long-term advocacy. I have therefore started writing articles to bring attention to some of the grave injustices I have borne witness to. The two articles I’m most proud of are those which look at the legislative backdrop to migrants’ rights, which are eroding the progress made in the twentieth century.

After graduating from Cambridge, I worked at the UN in humanitarian response, and am now managing the Ukraine response for War Child. I’ve come full circle, as I am now working with social entrepreneurs to create youth empowerment programmes in Ukraine, where I just returned from. Entrepreneurship can’t exist without human rights advocacy, and citizens being able to meet their own basic needs — but when these preconditions are in place, it can be a fantastic antidote to decades of disempowerment and marginalisation.