(Greek) Elena Papadopoulou: Last year, when we asked Melissa Fleming
to give a talk at TEDxThessaloniki 2015,
we could not possibly have imagined the role
the refugee crisis would be playing in our lives,
not only in Greece and Europe but in the whole world.
Melissa’s talk, given at last year’s TEDxThessaloniki event,
has been viewed over 1 million, almost 1.5 million times on TED channel.
Her talk helped most of us see in the face of Doaa
the faces of all the people forced to flee their countries
in the hope of being able to lead an “ordinary life,”
far away from the permanent threat of war.
Doaa was a lucky and heroic young woman.
She was among the few people who survived a tragic shipwreck
that happened in the Mediterranean Sea in 2014.
Fortunately, she managed to survive and save a baby,
despite not knowing how to swim.
Melissa Fleming wished to be here in person
and share with us the rest of the story.
That is to say: “What happened to Doaa? Where is she today? What is she doing?”
Due to her work with the United Nations, Melissa couldn’t join us today.
However, she has sent us a short video that I would like us to watch.
(Video) Melissa Fleming: Hello friends at TEDxThessaloniki, hello Elena.
Really great to be with you again though only virtually.
I wish I was there in person.
Elena asked me to let you know what has happened
since I was on stage this time last year delivering a talk about Doaa Al Zamal,
the heroic Syrian refugee young woman
who survived one of the worst shipwrecks on the Mediterranean sea, 500 people died
and she managed to save a baby girl after 4 days on the water
and watching the love of her life,
her fiancé Bassam, die in front of her eyes.
This was a tragic yet very hopeful story, a story that has inspired so many people.
I am writing a book about her story.
And one of the fellow speakers at the conference last year,
Alexis Pantazis, of the company Hellas Direct,
was also inspired by Doaa’s speech
and he and his company awarded her a very generous scholarship,
which really helped her.
She‘s now been resettled with her family to Sweden
and she is putting it towards her education.
It’s really helping her to start her new life.
I think it inspired his company and also his clients as well
not just to hear about the usual story
of large numbers of Syrian refugees,
other refugees arriving on the shores of Greece.
No other country has received so many refugees
but a single story, a single story that inspired him
and inspired his fellow.... I admit, all of his company.
I went to visit them in Athens,
a wonderful group of people who just said, "How can we help?"
I really think this company by doing so is showing
that if you help one individual, you are telling a larger story,
you are helping that person a lot but it also has an echo and a ripple effect.
It shows that one person, one company can do and influence a lot.
Private sector is doing a lot to help in the refugee crisis.
This is a crisis that is the worst since WWII.
We have 60 million people forcibly displaced.
And no time since WWII have we had so many people on the run.
Governments can’t do it alone and as you see
-- you are sitting in Thessaloniki, very close to the border of the FYROM --
the countries are reacting in ways now
which is shutting people off rather than embracing them.
We are seeing, hearing wonderful stories of individual actions
by local Greek citizens, I can’t even tell - I read one a day.
It really warms my heart.
A baker in Ιdomeni who took in families in his home
because he couldn’t stand to see them suffering in the cold.
One after the other these kind of stories,
private companies coming in to provide food, shelter.
Local NGOs filling in gaps of governments.
I think we are a time right now where the compassion is losing out
over the fear that is taking over,
the fear that is being exploited by politicians
who are really worried, more worried about losing their power
than they are about protecting people who are fleeing from war and persecution.
So all I wanted to say is thank you for this opportunity to speak.
Who would have known last year at this time
that Greece would become the center stage
for the biggest refugee crisis that the world has seen in a long time.
It is really, really difficult,
the humanitarian situation right now in Greece
and I really thank you all for caring and for doing your part.
Thanks and have a great TEDxThessaloniki 2016.
(Applause)
(Greek) EP: Melissa really wished to be here and share these few words with us.
So, I considered this video would be a unique opportunity
for us to see what happens when the lights of TEDxThessaloniki dim,
after all these stories have been told.
What do they leave us with? What do they encourage us to do?
What do they inspire us to do
so that each one of us can contribute to our world the way they can?
Following Melissa, we asked Alexis Pantazis,
whom Melissa mentioned in the video,
to give a talk at last year’s TEDxThessaloniki.
We approached him in his capacity of an entrepreneur,
namely, the founder of Hellas Direct.
So when he came to speak and we started talking about his presentation,
we expected that he would give a talk about entrepreneurship.
However, Alexis surprised us, thankfully in a pleasant way,
and he focused on a different topic,
which proved to be of great importance in entrepreneurship
and it has to do with one’s “mindset.”
Alexis focused on the mentality of refugees and immigrants,
on creating opportunities
and, why not, to make them work to their benefit.
So, last year, at TEDxThessaloniki,
Alexis met Melissa and the other speakers
and he decided to do something to help or to contribute,
in his own way and through his company.
Alexis Pantazis is here with us today
and I would like to invite him up on stage to discuss a few things
and share with you the way they went on to work together
or, if you prefer, what his contribution to Doaa’s story has been.
Alexis. (Applause)
Welcome! I am glad that you are here with us.
Most of us really wonder what is going on.
We come in to this hall - there are 700 of us in this building -
we get to know each other, listen to ideas, feel inspired,
but what happens when we leave this venue?
(English) So would you like to explain us briefly
what happened when you met with Melissa
and how this whole story became related to Hellas Direct?
Alexis Pantazis: Last year, the last but one speaker was myself
and the last one was Melissa.
And as I was finishing my talk and I started walking towards the back,
Melissa who I spent quite a bit of time with
- clearly because we were the only ones stuck there - we talked a lot about Doaa
and as she started coming on to the stage I could actually observe from the side
- I didn’t manage to get to my seat -
the facial expressions of all the people in the audience.
And I don’t know how many of you guys were here last year
but Melissa gave a very touching, emotional speech about the story of Doaa.
And what I‘ve realized
in the one day more or less that we spent together with Melissa
is that the story of Doaa represents a number of stories.
I would say thousands or even millions now of stories of refugees.
And one of the things that I noticed
as I was coming through the curtain on the main room
was that people were actually crying.
And what I've realized is that if we give an example
which is a human person of a big tragedy like the one we are going through now
to normal people like myself, yourselves, everybody who was in that room,
then people can relate to it and they can relate to it more.
So, we spoke with Melissa at the dinner afterwards
and it was a pretty emotional moment
because she gave a really amazing presentation
and I ask her, “So what is going on with Doaa?”
because that was last year, she survived 4 days into the sea,
she saved one life, she was granted the Award of bravery,
if I remember well, from the Athens Academy.
And Melissa said that, well, unfortunately
there was a lot of hype when everything happened,
there was a lot of headlines in the press.
There was a lot of talk, they invited her to different events
and then slowly but steadily as these things go, nobody really cared.
Melissa and her team did an amazing job
in trying to get her to get some legal papers
in order to go to Sweden which was her end goal
but Doaa was going through a bit of a rough patch.
She wasn’ t really feeling positive about the future,
the whole experience had sunk in.
She couldn’t see opportunity for her to be able to go abroad
and continue what she set out to do
with her fiancé at the time who unfortunately died in the wreck,
and that was to study.
She wanted to study to be a lawyer
in order to fight injustice in the whole world.
So, speaking with Melissa I was trying to figure out,
“Is there a way that I as an individual or we as a company, we could help in this?”
And we feel quite strongly about giving scholarships and we've done so
since the day that Emilios, my business partner and I founded the company.
But, "Is it possible that we could get involved in this?"
And Melissa was very, very supportive in this.
We started talking, the whole process took about 6 months.
Marilaura, who works with me, spent a lot of time speaking with Melissa
on what’s the best way to do it
and then you stumble into Greek bureaucracy,
where in order to give money, it’s even harder than to make money.
(Laughter)
So, we didn’t know whether we should give the money to Melissa
to give the money to Doaa; Doaa didn’t have an account.
So, we went through a lot of back and forths
but I think for us the bottom line was
that we decided that we are going to use Doaa’s story as a symbol,
as a small gesture on our part
to follow on from the spirit of TEDxThessaloniki last year,
grant her the scholarship for the degree that she really wanted to do.
As you heard from Melissa before, Doaa is now in Sweden
so that’s great news for everybody
and we just wanted to signal to other companies, individuals, organizations
that if everybody does their own little bit,
then we can really make a difference.
EP: So, your personal motive or the motive of Hellas Direct
was basically to make a difference in any way that you thought would be possible?
AP: I think for us it was a combination of two things.
The first one is: in what we do as a company,
we are trying to change the way our industry
- which is insurance industry - is being done.
So, we are trying, as we say, to rethink the whole chain.
We heard a lot of good stories before
whether it is from Alex Loizou
to talk about the buy-in of the whole company behind a culture.
So for us it is almost what we do in all other aspects of our lives,
so this was just an extension on the corporate social responsibility side.
Now, on that one, from the day we started the company
we've given a number of scholarships.
We gave two scholarships to people
to go and study in London at the City University.
We gave two scholarships to kids of policemen
because we felt that that as a group were not rewarded enough
for the contribution that they did
at least I road accidents which is what we really care about.
We've given a number of research grants so the fact
that we managed to divert some of these efforts onto Doaa in this case,
I think it sends an extra message of maybe
we can think of it a bit differently as an organization.
EP: Do you believe that the appropriate attitude
for either companies or for civil society actors,
in crisis of such magnitude as we are going through at the moment -
what do you think would be the right or more appropriate kind of mindset
that we would need to maybe adopt or try?
AP: I think as a mindset everybody has to react in the way that they see fit
and everybody’s values differ, whether it is on ethical levels
or on ideological levels or financial levels or any other way.
I think one of the things that we are realizing now,
especially in the European Union,
is that we cannot expect things to be done by the state
or by the European Union as a Union.
And everybody has different agendas,
everybody has different capabilities, different political beliefs,
so individuals and companies have a much more important role to play.
Unfortunately, in this part of the world
and in Cyprus where I am from it's exactly the same,
we tend to rely a lot on the role of the state,
that this is not my problem, they will do it,
and this day and age this does not seem to work.
So, I think any contribution on that
is at least changing gradually the mentality of people.
EP: Going back to your talk and actually the message of your talk,
you basically concentrated saying
that what it takes is a different kind of mindset
that usually refugees or immigrants tend to have
and that has a positive effect on the economy of a country
and maybe in evolving the society of a country.
Do you think that we are actually going through a same kind of situation
either in Greece or in Europe,
because basically we are more or less under the same terms?
I mean, we have a lot of immigrants and refugees
that are going through our countries.
Is this a same kind of opportunity that we may be facing with?
AP: I think it’s a huge opportunity,
but one thing we need to do as Europeans and as global citizens is,
“How you turn what is now a humanitarian crisis
into a full integration of these people into society?”
And I am not talking about a flattening of cultures,
religion and all that and languages.
I am really talking about how can we get these Syrian people coming in
and integrate them in a way that they are productive,
that there is social cohesion that actually works.
When you look at the demographics of the European Union
and compare them to the immigrants coming in, they are very different.
We are an aging, dying continent
and suddenly you have an influx of very young capable people.
And clearly some of them are poor and uneducated,
some of them are doctors and whatever.
So, I think there is a lot of value these people can bring.
You will always have xenophobia in these situations.
Out of interest, I was looking at what was the reaction of people
when the Vietnamese refugees in the 1970s came into the US
and what happened when the Jewish population
after the 2nd World War, they went into Cyprus of all places
at that time for holding camps similar to the ones you have in Ιdomeni now,
before they went to the newly formed Israel,
and when you a look at some of the headlines of the papers
they're the same as they are now,
people like Donald Trump saying, "I am going to build a wall,"
it’s exactly that reaction.
So, I think to your point, I think some of these reactions are very natural,
some of them you could even argue that some of them are justified,
but yeah, in the middle to long-term,
I think I am very optimistic about what is happening now.
EP: OK. One last question.
What would you respond to any criticism
that these kinds of initiatives like you took through your company,
some say that it is sheer marketing.
What would you respond to such a response?
(Laughter)
AP: I wish it wasn’t [UNCLEAR] I think there are two angles here.
The first one is that I think you can see the culture of a company just from...
in this day and age you cannot lie
about what your culture is as a company,
whether it’s TOMS shoes giving things out as you purchase their products,
whether it’s a coffee or a bread manufacturing in Kenya.
I think you can see through both the entrepreneurs
and the culture of the overall company.
So, I think on this one people can judge for themselves, I think.
At the same time though, in a very cynical way,
if efforts like this one are driven by marketing dynamics for different companies
and that means that companies do much more
because they believe that it helps their image
it’s something that unless they do the competition will get in front of them
and all that then, by all means.
I mean, it ends up in a broader good.
So, on this one that is what I would answer.
EP: Thank you very much. (Greek) Thank you Alex.
AP: Thank you.
(Applause)