Syrian refugee who became a civil activist found the call as a blockchain evangelist

There is an educational site for beginning crypto users called ZeFi. The site has useful introductory lessons, some interesting articles and a look of sincerity, much like other sites. However, none of it is that different – at least not in English. Its special feature is the language button in the upper right corner that reveals the Arabic version of the site.

“There’s really nothing about blockchain in Arabic. […] And when you first find something in Arabic, it’s mostly influencers who try to pump and dump coins, said ZeFi founder and CEO Karam Alhamad. The Arabic version of ZeFi is fuller than the English version. It has culturally informed examples and starts with the basics.

“ZeFi started with the idea of ​​explaining what money is first” to people who “have never used banks, or credit cards or PayPal, people who have no sense of what money is,” Alhamad said. To figure out how to explain blockchain, Alhamad and his staff went to their grandmothers to get started.

ZeFi started as a Telegram group and premiered online in March this year. It also keeps the connection to the phone. Internet access is scarce in some of ZeFi’s service areas, which are mainly Syria and Iraq, but almost everyone has a mobile phone, Alhamad said.

Translation challenges were everywhere – beef markets and bear markets, for example. Even the “blockchain” was difficult to translate, and it was difficult to explain against a background of monarchies and dictatorships, where the centralization of power and order is complete. Nevertheless, ZeFi developed vocabulary and is now working on a technical dictionary with graphics.

From petroleum technology to civil society

Alhamad is a first-year student at the Yale Jackson School of Global Affairs. He got there via a detour route that began at a Syrian college in 2011 when Alhamad was studying petroleum engineering and the Syrian uprising broke out.

The uprising was “a new purpose, a new goal,” he said.

Alhamad became an activist and was arrested by the authorities four times between 2011 and 2013. The fourth time he was held for almost a year in a crowded underground facility. But he was not deterred.

It was after his last imprisonment, when he worked for social groups, that Alhamad first heard about cryptocurrency.

“It’s hard to send money,” he said. “I know there is a very limited aspect of crypto when it comes to transactions, but it is very difficult, and back then we tried to find other ways we could receive money from donors.”

Alhamad, however, had bigger things to worry about. The following year, he and his brother fled to Turkey and then set up a website dedicated to his experiences in Syria. Described as an animated graphic novel, it is actually somewhat graphic, and also lyrical.

Alhamad received a liberal arts degree from Bard College Berlin, but was blocked from completing a degree in the United States by Donald Trump’s executive order, widely referred to as a “Muslim ban.” He married and worked in development organizations.

In 2019, Alhamad began to think about the potential of blockchain technology to build a civil society. In 2020, he quit his job and set out to create his own non-governmental organization (NGO), the ZeFi Foundation.

Launches its own NGO

The ZeFi Foundation was in full swing in early 2022. It provided grants to Syrians to pay for university applications and related costs and led workshops for 22 NGOs in civil society in Syria to talk about the political aspects of the blockchain and how to use it. blockchain for human rights activism and organization. Using blockchain for data storage was another major issue.

“If you register human rights atrocities by the regime, or even in opposition areas, you will not use Google Docs and suddenly have lost everything,” Alhamad said.

At ZeFi, they talk very little about crypto trading, Alhamad said. This is not surprising since the opportunities for trade are limited in their focus area. The organization aims to develop the capacity of NGOs to use the blockchain so that they will be ready to take advantage of it “when it is fully legalized.”

Related: Human rights activists are targeting privileged crypto-critics in a letter to Congress

One of Alhamad’s hopes for the blockchain is that it will help deliver more money to places that need it. With conventional money transfer systems, “everyone gets a cut” – subcontractors, operating costs and transfer fees erode transfer fees, and sometimes less than 10% of the announced amount of a grant goes to Syria, he said.

Meanwhile, even when Alhamad is studying in New Haven, there is a lot for the ZeFi Foundation to do. In areas controlled by the opposition in Syria, there are service gaps. It is a struggle to keep tools and food distribution going and to meet similar needs that would have been the responsibility of the authorities.

ZeFi is in talks with civil society groups in areas controlled by both the government and the opposition. It does not make all the activities known, but Alhamad said that ZeFi is discussing a comprehensive vaccination register “even without getting any kind of political agreement from the military forces in these areas.” There are also talks about the use of non-fungible tokens (NFT) to register refugees’ educational and other qualifications.

Syria has already seen some blockchain applications. The UN has used blockchain to distribute food aid to refugees. A for-profit company called Hala Systems uses blockchain technology to manage user-delivered event records. It also uses the information to issue air strikes to civilians via Telegram.