Duet

Duet donors provide refugees in Greece with what they need most. At the same time donors help the local economy, which is overwhelmed by the presence of refugees. Our platform could be used to address many similar crises around the world. The Elevate Prize would make this possible.

We want Duet to grow and become self-sustaining by licensing our platform. Revenue from licensing to other non-profits would allow us to maximise our own impact and expand operations to help more refugees. And licensing would spread the revolution in philanthropy that we want to spark. Elevate’s network and expertise would be invaluable.

 We want to be up and running with our first licensing partnership within the next three months, and we have a promising pipeline of future partners for 2022. To do this, we need to pilot our current system with the potential partner. This means an engineering and design effort from our team to merge the two systems. After the initial pilot, we would make the changes necessary to be as licensing friendly as possible for a broad range of potential partners. 

 With Elevate’s help, we could seed a new way of doing philanthropy.

Three of my four grandparents were refugees. The scars they bore were psychological, and get passed down the generations. When USC’s engineering school offered Engineering and Design for Global Challenges, a class involving learning in a refugee camp in Greece, I jumped at it.

That course and the product we developed have changed my life. I’m still the program’s Entrepreneur in Residence, mentoring student teams. 

I’ve succeeded at a lot of what I’ve done—captaining the USC Rugby Team, making All-American alternate, being President of my fraternity, an Honors Scholar and Co-Chair of the USC Sexual and Personal Misconduct Committee. 

But my experience in Moria camp, and then working with my fantastic, driven team, has given me purpose on a different level. Let’s revolutionise philanthropy—however little people can give, they can know they are helping a specific family get what it needs. 

My vision is to make the world a more connected place. When a refugee asks for shin guards for a soccer-obsessed child, someone with the same passion responds via PayPal. When people are desperate for a tea kettle—for many refugees a symbol of having a home—people donate. What we need to do is connect them together.

Humanitarian aid is broken. More than $800,000,000 was donated in 2018 to the humanitarian response for refugees in Greece, but over 70% of that aid was wasted, spent on well-intentioned but useless items, or lost in organizational failures. At Duet, we knew we can do good, better. We saw a three-part problem: a lack of transparency which enabled waste, a sourcing problem that led to poor environmental and economic outcomes, and families who had no agency to get the tools they needed to rebuild. 

Harnessing technology, we have created a scalable three-sided marketplace that brings together donors, beneficiaries, and the local economy. At Duet, we believe that sustainable change requires a multi-stakeholder solution. Our platform which is operational in Lesvos and Athens, Greece allows beneficiaries to connect with local partner stores where they “shop” for the things they need. These items then appear on our website where our donors can “meet” our families and donate the specific items which are then picked up at our partner stores. 

Duet can be applied beyond Greece to not only the nearly 80 million refugees worldwide, but also to other issue areas to eliminate donation waste, support local economies, and increase transparency.

In order to create scalability while maintaining a personal approach, we have implemented a store portal through which we onboard, communicate with, and transfer funds directly to local businesses. Store owners can confirm stock, receive payment, communicate directly with our team, and confirm item pick up. With this technology, Duet is able to seamlessly introduce a new customer segment to store owners across the world. This solution invests in small businesses while fostering community integration as locals’ perception of refugees shifts from “other” to “neighbor”. 

On the other end of our “three-sided marketplace”, our culturally relevant and appropriate app allows Duet families to share their stories with donors, communicate with our team, and request items from local partner stores. Once an item has been funded, a verification code is automatically generated for both the store and the refugees. By simply taking a photograph of the item, beneficiaries close the loop - all through the app. 

Our innovative approach enables Duet to be scalable and hyper-localized. While scaling, technology enables Duet to constantly connect with locally-owned businesses and ensure that donations are being channeled through the local economy to keep Duet’s solution efficient and advantageous for all stakeholders.

We impact the lives of refugee families on Lesvos by enabling donors to provide them with exactly what they need, while acknowledging them as individuals. We connect refugees with local shopkeepers, who had previously seen them only as problems. We help small donors feel they are really, truly helping when they give whatever they can afford—one refugee really needed, and requested, a 1 euro pencil! 

We believe that the Duet platform can have an enormous impact on philanthropic aid by licensing it to other non-profits to fulfill needs and create connections where they are desperately needed. It would allow non-profits to source more humanitarian aid from the local economies, rather than importing from abroad. During Covid, we have utilized Duet with food-insecure families in LA. It can work around the globe.

But within that sweeping vision is our understanding of its impact on individuals: the elderly refugee woman who can’t get damaged feet into the stock shoes she is handed at the camp, but who learns she can go to a store and find a pair she can walk in. There is something magical about someone on the other side of the world paying for her shoes because they understand.