A series of Somali success stories in the diaspora.

sigmund

JUSTICE FOR SHUKRI ABDI
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Sigmund

Are you sure about that? The thread starts with the success of an 18 year old's (high school student) post, but most importantly, aren't the fobs Somalis? If a fob can succeed, then why can't the non-fobs? They can be role models for others. Sxb, let's keep negativity out of this thread and if you've other (non-fobs) stories, please feel free to add.
yeah your right sorry im happy for all somalis
 
Mother and daughter doctor-heroes.

They've been called the "saints of Somalia." Doctor Hawa Abdi and her daughter Deqo Mohamed discuss their medical clinic in Somalia, where -- in the face of civil war and open oppression of women -- they've built a hospital, a school and a community of peace.

 
Inside the Story: Twin daughters of Somalian refugees on the road to becoming doctors.

Seventeen-year-old twin sisters are at the front line of speaking out for refugees.

They are daughters of Somalian refugees and are Muslim.

Asma and Anisa Dahir are also making strides in the medical field--they both have dreams of becoming pediatric surgeons so they can one day return to Somalia to help.

"It's so sad to see that children -- newborns to five or 10 years old -- they have so many complications physically and mentally," said Anisa.

The twins are studying at the Jordan Academy for Technology and Careers, or JATC, in West Jordan.

"We need to embrace our children and grow our youth," said Asma. "The youth are the new leaders."

Back in the early '90s, the girl's parents fled the war-torn country of Somalia and ended up in a refugee camp in Kenya.

Their mother came to America first, by herself, while pregnant with the twins. She worked several jobs to try and keep food on the table.

Asma said that her parents' experiences "made my siblings and I say, 'Oh, we need to get an education so we could escape poverty.'"

That is why the Dahirs are taking their education so seriously and want to be doctors.

"It motivated me to make a change in the world to go back to Somalia, or other refugee camps, and help them," said Anisa.

But these girls want not just to make a difference in the medical field. They also want to make a difference out on the street, making their voices heard in the refugee community.

At just 17, the sisters have joined in several major protests in Salt Lake for refugee rights.

"As a Muslim, female, black refugee, I feel obligated to speak for my rights," said Anisa. "I feel like it's crucial to let your voices be heard."

The twins say people need to be educated about refugees.

"I've been treated really bad," Asma said. "People are afraid of the unknown and I feel if we speak up, share our voices, people will not have to ignorance that they have today."

"I've been called a terrorist. I've had my hijab ripped off. I've been bullied. I've been harassed so many different ways because of my identity," Anisa explained. "It takes a mental and physical toll on me and it's sad because Utah is my home. I was born and raised here. I don't know anything else besides Utah and to see that I am not safe in my own home, in my own back yard, it's just horrifying."

The best way the twins know how to fight the battle is through education, so that one day other refugees can look to them for leadership.

"We can create a solid foundation where we can share our narratives and our stories and I feel like that is crucial," said Asma.

The sisters are not alone in their dreams of a better education. All their siblings are also hoping to go into the medical field.

They also hope to one day create a nonprofit organization to help kids from third world countries.

https://kutv.com/features/inside-th...lian-refugees-on-the-road-to-becoming-doctors

 
‘Sense of duty’ sees Somali refugees head home

From Britain to Canada, people who have spent decades away are bringing their skills to rebuild their country.

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Saredo Mohamed has returned from Canada to be a facilitator at the Galkayo Education Centre in Galkayo, Somalia.

Slapping a large piece of equipment wrapped in packing materials, Dr Mohamed Hussein Aden smiles: “The Swiss sent us this but unfortunately not with the instruction manual so we don’t know how to use it. It’s sat here for a good few years now. Shame really.” The ceiling of the theatre is sagging and the operating table stained and split. It’s a far cry from Harrow, north London, where Aden lived and worked before returning in 2012 to Somalia, from where he fled as a refugee in 1994.

Now he is the director of Galkayo hospital, the main facility for the inhabitants of Somalia’s third city and for those living for hundreds of miles around in the drought-hit countryside.

“I came back in 2012. We Somalians have always felt a duty, an obligation, to support those back home, and now we are coming back, bringing the skills back, engineering, building, medicine. So many of our politicians are from the diaspora,” said Aden, 62, who harbours political ambitions. Four of his six children have returned with him, he said, seeing Somalia’s fragile peace as an opportunity.

Somalia’s president, Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed, has dual US and Somalian citizenship. In his cabinet and ministries British accents vie with those from US, Canada and other parts of Europe. The aid agencies and civil society are full of young people like Saredo Mohamed, 22, born in Canada to Somali parents, who is relearning her mother tongue and culture.

“You see a lot of people in my age group coming back, it is a wonderful opportunity to give back and also to learn about my culture,” she said. Mohamed is working at Galkayo Education Centre for Peace and Development, founded by her aunt Hawa Aden Mohamed, another returnee from Canada.

The sheer numbers of diaspora returnees is unique to a country that has seen decades of war and lawlessness. In 2015, two million Somalis living outside the country were sending home so much money to support the households who stayed behind that the remittances accounted for 23% of GDP.

There have been tensions. Local Somalis have sometimes demanded more rights than those who have spent decades or whole lives abroad while returnees have been accused of assuming superiority due to their education and experience. A symposium was held in the capital Mogadishu last June to attempt to bridge such gaps.

“Such efforts hope to see people who have stayed and foreign returnees rebuilding Somalia together,” said Aden. “The diaspora has a big role, many of the young people come back and have a real culture shock. My son, 25, was really shocked when he arrived from London, it took 35 days for him to assimilate, now he is drinking camel’s milk!

“Myself, I came back after 28 years because my sister was dying. I said I would stay three months. Here I am after five years.”

Aden shows the work being done on a new building in the hospital’s compound: “Eighty per cent of the funding comes directly from the diaspora, mainly Europe, the Scandinavians, Denmark. We are really changing the town.” The construction work is being done by a company owned by Ali Dhaaf Abdi, aged 42, fresh from Norway. His Norwegian-born wife is still adjusting to this dusty city where only a handful of buildings are over one storey, and only one more than two storeys. “We will soon change that,” said Abdi. “For $25,000 I can build you a house for a family of four … I am building houses here for people from Sweden, from Canada, from the UK.

“I came back because while it is easy to make a business in Europe, it is difficult to grow bigger. Here I can expand. And this is my country. Now I have 120 employees. They welcome me here for the jobs.

“I do miss the security, Galkayo is very fragile. I also miss supermarkets and the high quality of clothing, but the education is the same. We have good wi-fi, my children come and go between here and Oslo.”

https://www.theguardian.com/global-...gees--head-home-sense-of-duty-rebuild-country
 
Knowledge Transfer from Highly-Skilled Somali Diaspora
Abdulkadir Gure

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https://www.google.com.au/imgres?im...6zfAhUSfH0KHWKABoAQMwg_KAIwAg&iact=mrc&uact=8
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' I always wished to go back to Somalia to transfer the knowledge and skills I gained from Europe. Personally, I felt the CD4D programme is extremely rewarding, due to its challenging opportunities. The courses I was delivering at the Somali National University offered me multiple opportunities and I really loved delivering them as I found them an opportunity for both self-development and knowledge transfer’’

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Through IOM's Connecting Diaspora for Development (CD4D) project, Mr Abdulkadir Gure (a Somali water expert) was assigned to contribute to the enhancement and strengthening of the capacity of the Somali National University (SNU) by transferring his knowledge, skills and experiences to the university's Water Resources Management Department, particularly the Faculty of Agriculture and Environmental Science and the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine and Animal Husbandry.

The courses delivered by Mr. Gure were an opportunity for the students academically and for their future careers. SNU is tremendously satisfied by the cooperation with IOM for the implementation of the program and is extremely pleased with the way Mr. Gure conducted his assignment while he was with SNU. The University found him to be a great resource and his passion for the subject was evident in the delivery of his lessons.

It is also important to mention that Mr. Gure has produced a variety of Somali maps with SNU's logo using the Geographic Information System (GIS) software to enhance SNU's visibility.

All in all, SNU students' understanding of water management greatly increased. This was made evident from the group discussions they took part in and presentations they had to deliver. However, without a good follow up strategy, the courses which were delivered will resemble the harvesting of a big crop only to let it spoil out on the field.

He (Mr.Gure) has made an outstanding contribution during his attachment period. He has provided a technical advice and workshops, on assessing climate change impacts and adaptation in Somalia as the country has been alternating from droughts to floods for the past decades." __ Dr. Mohamed Rasheed, Dean of the Faculty of Agriculture and Environmental Science, Somali National University (SNU).

https://social.shorthand.com/IOMNL/nyktrHLLr3/knowledge-transfer-from-highly-skilled-somali-diaspora

Devastating floods Overwhelm parts of Somalia-Abdulkadir Gure.

http://www.academia.edu/36797407/Devastating_floods_Overwhelm_parts_of_Somalia-Abdulkadir_Gure
 
How A Somali Entrepreneur Beat The UN And Built A $670M Remittance Firm.



Ten years ago, Somalia-born Ismail Ahmed blew the whistle on corruption at the U.N. Development Program in Nairobi, and his boss told him he’d never work again in remittances or development.

Today, Ahmed’s London-based remittance firm, WorldRemit Ltd., sends money to 148 countries and has just raised $40 million in a deal led by London investment firm LeapFrog Investments.

The Series C funding round values the fintech firm at more than $670 million, Bloomberg reported. WorldRemit’s longtime Silicon Valley backers, Accel Partners and Technology Crossover Ventures, invested in the deal.

WorldRemit expects to net $81 million in revenue in 2017 — 46 percent more than 2016, and up from $35.8 million in 2015, Ahmed said. The company is looking at a potential initial public offering in two to three years, he told Bloomberg.

The company is licensed in the U.S. and Ahmed told Bloomberg he expects “the U.S. will grow our revenues as much as 40 percent over the few years.”

“More than half our revenue comes from transactions going to Africa. The U.S. has the largest number of Africans,” Ahmed told AFKInsider in a 2016 interview.

Long before Ahmed became a compliance advisor to the U.N., he helped African companies comply with money transfers. He attended the University of London Business School, where he studied for an MBA. After 9/11 he was doing research at the University of Sussex. One of the companies he interviewed had been shut down for non-compliance at a time when the remittance business was unregulated.

Ahmed learned it was critical to have compliance systems in place from the beginning in a remittance business.

When he started building the WorldRemit platform, compliance was the major investment in the beginning. The company has been in existence since 2010. “I took money from angels (investors) who let us decide how to build the business. We only took money from venture capitalists and started growing fast once we put that in place. It i
s one of the reasons we started licensing in the U.S. in 2014.”

In March 2014, WorldRemit got $40 million in funding from Accel Partners. In 2015, the 6-year-old company was valued at $500 million in a $100-million Series B funding round led by Technology Crossover Ventures (TCV), with participation from Accel. In February 2016, the company secured a $45 million line of credit from U.S. growth fund TriplePoint Venture Growth and Silicon Valley Bank.

Working as an advisor to the U.N., Ahmed was fired after he blew the whistle on fraud and corruption at the U.N. Development Program in Nairobi. He received threats from within the organization but ultimately won his case at the U.N. Ethics Committee.

“When I decided to blow the whistle I had a better chance of winning the lottery than surviving the U.N.,” Ahmed told AFKInsider. “It wasn’t expected I would win my case. My boss at the time threatened me and said I’d never be able to work in remittances or development. People respect the U.N. It was a credible threat. I not only won the case but was able to work in remittances.”

WorldRemit has offices around the world including Australia, U.K., Canada, New Zealand and Japan. It started licensing in the U.S. in 2014. The U.S. is one of the most challenging countries to work in, Ahmed said. You have to get a license in each state.

Ernst & Young described Ahmed as an entrepreneur with an impressive story who is disrupting his sector. “Starting from scratch he has overcome adversity, shaken up the market and achieved global impact and success,” said EY event leader Joanna Santinon, according to an Invest In UK report.

Ahmed spoke to AFKInsider, a sister site of Moguldom.com, in 2016 about overcoming adversity, taking on one of the world’s most respected institutions and winning, and how he turned $200,000 from winning his case against the U.N. into a remittance business now valued at $670 million.

We’ve reposted the interview here.


https://moguldom.com/14281/how-a-somali-entrepreneur-beat-the-u-n-and-built-a-670m-remittance-firm/
 
These Three Somali Tech Entrepreneurs Just Won Sweden’s Top Tech Awards and Could Win the Nordic Awards.

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Last month, three Somali tech entrepreneurs (see them all below) won the Swedish National Competition. They are now nominated for the Nordic competition. All three are representing Sweden at the Nordic competition and are competing with teams from all over the Nordic countries.

Recently, one of Sweden’s leading innovation and tech startup experts asked: What does a Swedish Entrepreneur look like? We say it looks like a Somali nomad selling camels online!

https://allthingssomali.com/these-t...-tech-awards-and-could-win-the-nordic-awards/
 
Somali UK graduate shares success with tearful mum (Video).

When Ramla Tyrow walked on to the stage to collect her diploma, she shared that joy with one of the most important people in her life - her mum.

Ramla, 21, came to the UK in 1999 with her family to seek a better life and escape from the decades of civil war in Somalia.

"My mum moved us here to give us a better future. Somalia wasn't a very child-friendly place then," Ramla told the BBC.

"Just after the ceremony, my mum told me how unbelievably proud she was that I was the first person in her family to graduate from university."

The heart-warming moment showing Ramla's mother, Fardowsa, crying on her daughter's shoulder has been shared thousands of times on Twitter.

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The tweet is captioned: "Mama you ran from a civil war so I could be safe and get the education you didn't.

"Today you cried when you saw me in my robe. Did it for you."

Ramla attended Middlesex University in north-west London and obtained her degree in Psychology and Counselling.

 
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