“My answer is to bring jobs to Lebanon, and bring hope into people’s lives. With digiTAL, we tap into the global gig economy to employ youth across Lebanon as freelancers in projects, ranging from data entry and virtual assistance to web and mobile app development.”
Deanielle Dawra (MPP 2013) is an American based in Lebanon, a country currently grappling with its worst economic and political crisis in decades.
“I can’t control what’s happening around me,” says Deanielle, “but what I can do is bring more work into the country, to give it to those who need it.”
Below, Deanielle talks about her social mission to jump-start the careers of youth in Lebanon and how her LKY School experience has helped her to be a more effective leader and team player.
By day, I work at my full-time job, and I spend long nights and weekends on digiTAL, a social enterprise that I founded and launched in early 2020 to create employment opportunities in Lebanon.
[ALUMNI-INFO TEXT="When I moved to Lebanon – my husband’s home country - in 2019, I was astonished by the high youth unemployment rate—37% before Covid-19 and the current economic crisis—despite many having university degrees and being trilingual. This is especially the case in North Lebanon where we are based, which is farther from the economic hub of Beirut and home to a vulnerable population who is often overlooked by the government.
The situation has gotten worse with the country’s economic crisis, the pandemic lockdown, and the Beirut blasts. It’s literally crisis after crisis every day, and even a Hollywood movie couldn’t capture the sense of despair in the country right now. Imagine seeing children begging on the streets, or the elderly in supermarkets saying, “How can I afford this?” Or fathers robbing pharmacies for formula milk and diapers. It’s heartbreaking and I’ve asked myself repeatedly, “What can I do?”
My answer is to bring jobs to Lebanon, and bring hope into people’s lives. With digiTAL, we tap into the global gig economy to employ youth across Lebanon as freelancers in projects, ranging from data entry and virtual assistance to web and mobile app development. But we’re not a recruitment agency— all our projects are supervised by experienced managers and we actively encourage our freelancers to build their skills. For instance, my graphic designers work on international projects while staying in a remote village in Lebanon, and I push them a lot of the time, by finding training opportunities for them."][/ALUMNI-INFO]
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It took me a while to work up the courage to launch digiTAL. I had to tell myself, “Quit being afraid, and just do it. People need you.”
I have dual degrees in public policy and international affairs from the LKY School and Columbia SIPA. I’d heard about SIPA alumni who were running social enterprises to give jobs to refugees, and I was really inspired by that. Before setting up digiTAL, I reached out to my network, including LKY School alumni, to validate my idea. This was before Covid-19, and before remote work became a huge trend in the world. I asked questions like “Do you outsource work? What are your challenges? What kind of work do you outsource?” Their answers gave me insights into what I might face moving forward, in terms of quality control and meeting deadlines, and that was very helpful.
Interestingly, it wasn’t just people whom I was close to who got back to me, and I think it goes back to the connection that we had, being from the same university. More than half of those who responded to me from the LKY School network weren’t personal friends, but they were willing to help me because they wanted to support a noble cause.
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[ALUMNI-QUOTES TEXT="My dual-degree programme began at SIPA, where I would have lectures along with 500 other students. With a cohort that large, it was hard to make a personal connection with professors, or even with fellow students. And probably because it was the first year, the course was more theoretical. In Singapore, at the LKY School, what I got was a personalised programme. I knew all of my professors on a first-name basis, because the class sizes were small.
My education in Singapore wasn’t just about public policy, how to reach out to stakeholders, or how to do research. We also had professors who focused on practical learning, and I took leadership and negotiation classes that were hands-on and very useful in my professional development. Through these classes, I learned about working in a team, which does not come naturally to me because I’m a perfectionist and naturally hesitant to delegate work. During my leadership classes, we were placed in uncomfortable situations—on one occasion, they put us on an island where we were left to fend for ourselves, figure out where to sleep, and worry if wild boars were going to come our way. These experiences showed me how to analyse team dynamics and improve the way that I work with others. Today I delegate many tasks to my close-knit and highly dependable team – it is the only way to scale as a social enterprise."][/ALUMNI-QUOTES]
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Although I’m running a social enterprise, at the end of the day, business decisions are important. When I hire new freelancers, there’s a small project that I give them as a test. There are freelancers that don’t work out, and I’m comfortable with saying, “I’m sorry, we can’t continue with this relationship.” But if they deliver, I’m here to support them 100 percent. It was hard in the beginning, but it’s working well now. I've gotten to the point where I have a good team—I trust them, I know the quality of their work, they’re open to feedback, and we have a good relationship.
To illustrate how life has changed for someone on my team: we have a computer science graduate who’s 27 years old. He lives in a village in North Lebanon, which is about a two-hour drive from Beirut. He can’t leave his family because his father is ill, his mother doesn’t work, and his sisters are still studying—he needs to step up at 27 and take on all this responsibility. He does web scraping for me, and because all my clients are from outside Lebanon, I am able to pay him above-market wages. He’s able to support his family, and I’ve pushed him to learn more software skills; he’s applying for programmes he didn’t even know about previously. That’s definitely a success story.
My next priority for digiTAL is scaling up our efforts. So far, we’ve employed 36 freelancers in Lebanon, in 24 different communities. We’ve brought in 115 jobs, and I’m very proud of that, but it’s not enough. One of my biggest goals is to reach the Lebanese diaspora—there are about 10 to 14 million Lebanese who live abroad, and many of them are very successful. They want to help their people, and to make this happen, I need to put digiTAL out there, in terms of marketing and getting our business strategies going.
To students and alumni who’re interested in starting a social enterprise, my advice is to network with other social entrepreneurs and feed off their successes. A social enterprise is not like a typical company, where there’s fear of competition. Because there’s an underlying social mission, you’ll see that people are more willing to cooperate and support each other. Don’t worry about the complexity of your idea—the business model for digiTAL is very simple, but I don’t know of other organisations that are doing what we do in Lebanon. Finally, be creative in utilising technology, and don’t be afraid to plunge in and get started. You might fail, but you’ll also learn from failure to do better.