Diaspora matters: Kingsley Aikins at TEDxVilnius

hi and I'm interested in and I'm fascinated by and I'm passionate about diasporas now I have to start with the admission when I started in this world I didn't know what the word meant I thought diaspora was something you took to of with a headache I had no idea of the exact meaning of the word and then when I looked into it it was actually got creek arjen's two Greek words dia meaning over and spiro meaning scattering and it was first used by the reference to the Exile of the Jews from Babylon in the 5th century and traditionally throughout history has been associated with the Jews and with Israel but over the recent years it's gone mainstream and where every country now talks about its diaspora in fact the migration policy institute in washington says was 450 government institutions in over 55 countries were engaged with diaspora and you know the numbers are pretty impressive in 1990 there was 150 million people living in a country other than the one they were born in but now that number is 240 million people if it were a country it would be the fifth largest country in the world there's 80 million Europeans live outside the country they were born in and migration has become this phenomena I think migration was this great centrifugal force distributing and dispersing people all around the world and diaspora is this kind of interesting convergent force which is bringing people back now in my country Ireland ten million people have emigrated from Ireland so we have this enormous diaspora of 70 million people around the world and we regard them not as lost actors but as a terrific national asset now when you look at the contribution the assets have made Justin remittances alone 560 billion dollars last year sent home to home countries by people in their diaspora it is an enormous contribution it is a form if you like of soft power and this was a concept that Professor Joseph Nye of Harvard University championed in his book soft power hard power is economic and military conflict but soft power is the ability to get the outcomes that you want through attraction rather than coercion and the Astra's are a perfect example of soft power this is a connected world like never before the measurement of power in this world is connectedness the Information Age is over everything is available to everybody at the click of a switch now we're in this networked world and in this networked world you have to build your global connections and it's not even about countries anymore it's about cities and regions the world is about connected clusters of creative people or hanging around and spending time together that's the world that we're in the economists nail this some time ago when they had it on the front cover the magic of diasporas how migrant business networks are changing the world the one bright spark in the world economy they called it and migrants are extraordinary starters of businesses in the United States you have companies like Google and eBay in Intel started by migrants you now have migrants in the c-level of positions of enormous array of companies coming like coca-cola Pepsi IRR Dow Chemicals are run by migrants and they're connecting back to their country of origin in fact just recently the new CEO of Microsoft was an Indian born and educated but moved to the United States so we have this extraordinary influence of power of migrants in the world as I traveled around the world I lived and worked in six countries I asked myself six I asked myself four really big questions now the questions were what helped China become this massive manufacturing power what helped India become a global technology hub what helped Israel become the great startup nation of the world and then in my case in our case what helped bring peace to Northern Ireland and the answer is the same networking there diasporas so there's that word diaspora again but I'm interested in that word networking because I think networking and global networking with diasporas is critically important and when you talk to people they always agree with you and when you experience and see how people make progress they network their way to success you can't in this life do it alone opportunities don't float around on plows they're attached to people but here's what here's what's curious companies have strategies for advertising marketing PR finance but they don't have strategies for networking schools and colleges and business schools don't teach networking so why is that and the answer is well I don't know the answer but if any of you know the answer ping me on LinkedIn and let me know because I just don't know why that is the case despite the fact that is so important maybe maybe it's because networking has got a kind of a sleazy image we imagine this Kitely obsequious person making noise of distributing business cards at a furious rate very strong sales kind of dimension I think you know the type you wake up in the morning and you find their business card and the turn-up of your trousers but that's not what networking is networking is building long-term hearts and minds sustainable relationships networking is about being world class listeners and here's the problem of the world we live in people only listen to prepare what they want to say next rather than to hear what the other person is saying networking is about serendipity how you can make random chance happen in a non-random way by doing certain things going certain places hanging around with certain people networking is about having strong strong connections a small number of strong relationships and then a wide array of weak connections because we live in a world where it's not what you know it's not who you know it's who knows you and networking is about using technology cleverly and smartly but here's the challenge you have to do that in high tech you have to use but with high touch and you need to put some humanity in to humanize technology and when you bring all these together and apply them to diasporas diaspora to become a really formidable force so my story is I spent 21 years running for working for - for organization Kali Ireland fellows and the honored funds were started by two exceptional individuals have you ever seen a monument to a committee it's always inspired individuals a guy called Tony O'Reilly around the HJ Heinz food company diner on the owner of the Pittsburgh Steelers football team that won six Super Bowls in the United States and they had an idea they had a vision they had a notion but there was such a thing as an Irish empire an empire not built by military meif or force of arms but just the fact that so many people had emigrated throughout the world and they asked the question would these people respond to the ancestral echo the distant drum of a faraway land idle they didn't know and so they had one of these great big black-tie fundraising the great the good events in Washington in New York and the dinner was so unsuccessful the only reason they had a second dinner a year later was to pay for the first two it was they had and yet it went on to extraordinary success the model was the UJA the United Jewish appeal but the Jewish community in the United States had done to support Israel could that be replicated for Ireland we have a slogan peace culture charity actually we decided to change it to look Irish dress British think it us if we could get those combination together we might we might get something going and that's 450 million dollars ago 1,200 organizations supported throughout the length and breadth of the island of Ireland the organization now is tens of thousands of people attending hundreds of events in 39 cities around the world and it's not just the money it's the fact that people got engaged by getting them engaged through the portal of philanthropy people connected in lots of other different ways whether it's business or culture or art or sport or education or tourism so extraordinary successful and I got taken aside early in my career with this organization by this guy and he said where were you educating I said Island he said where were you born I said Island and he said well you're an FBI and I said Pat because that was his name I said Pat what's an FBI you say an FBI is a foreign-born Irishman real Irishman are born in the Bronx that Boris Chicago the bar in Boston and then it hit me it hit me like a ton of bricks and there's a light bulb moment there's a difference between islands and Irish nests is the difference between the state which is the physical boundary and the lines on the map and the nation of Ireland which is a global notion and that Cup on Fifth Avenue on st. Patrick's Day who says I'm Irish and he's never been in Ireland and his parents have never been in Ireland he's part of that global tribe and we have to engage and involve him so I believe in such a thing is diaspora capital they asked for capital of the resources the overseas resources available to a country it's made up of three flows the flows of people the clothes of Finance the flows of knowledge and that every country has this to varying degrees and this is an emotional business it's about visions it's about dreams and you know Martin Luther King famously said I have a dream he didn't say I have a strategic plan but to make to make this business work you do need both because diasporas can be difficult there it can be dispute ASIS and diverse and diffuse and distant there can be tensions there can be contradictions my favorite line I I heard once from a guy in New York he said I wish I was back in Dublin wishing I was back in New York and I think you can see the sort of contradiction there is in that with Diaspora capital so let me tell you one initiative because there's now hundreds and hundreds of Nishat ofthe and dozens and dozens of countries around the world but I was involved when last year it's called the gathering and Ireland decided to invite back the Diaspora to visit Ireland last year they designated the year of the gathering the government announced it but couldn't deliver on a big themselves they had to get everybody involved every community in Ireland got involved and there were 5,000 events and there were all sorts of events cultural events and music events and heritage events and the genealogy events sporting events everybody grasped this concept and three hundred thousand people came back to visit Ireland it really was an extraordinary occasion and there's a little secret which I going to tell you about this event and I hope that you don't tell anybody else because in Ireland we say the definition of a secret is somebody something you tell somebody only one person at a time and you know secrets are I had a call from a friend in London the other day and he said I was told not to repeat this so I'll only tell you once and Dublin funnily enough was the only city in the world that the Russian KGB closed their office because there were no secrets so you'll understand how this er approach we take two secrets in Ireland but this gathering was an extremely successful organization swimming accessible adventure so I have to admit and put my hand up that I'm a founder member of a international organization called case and case stands for a copy and steal everything now what I do is I go around the world and I see what other countries are doing in this space and then I see what we could use for other countries because here's what's interesting about the Diaspora business its non-competitive somebody who's going to help Palestine or Peru or Poland is not going to help Lithuania or Turkey or Greece that's just the reality and so we should share everything so what does this mean I think the great challenge is for everybody to go out and to diaspora eyes and that's about the ugliest word in the English language which I think I've invented and because what is Ted all about what Ted is all about ideas and creativity and talent and innovation and by definition that's about people and the aspirins are about people and people seep and slip and slide from country to country and so we need to put in place strategies to find out who those people are where they are and what they're doing that's the research capacity we need to take these people of a journey where they may be distrustful or may dislike us a journey that brings them to the extent that they're passionately involved with our country and the glue and all of this is a word that we seem to have lost so much of which is the word trust and Trust is not an event you don't meet somebody and they trust you tomorrow Trust is not deserved Trust is earned it can take years to get and be lost in a millisecond and so you've got to take people in this second stage of cultivation to bring them on that journey you have to have what we call solicitation asks and tasks if you don't ask nothing will happen and finally you need a program of stewardship which is to convert that initial interest you know what I refer to earlier long-term hearts and minds sustainable relationships so the challenge then is to go forth and diaspora eyes it's for all of us and Ted globally to embrace this concept to convince ourselves and to convince our families and convince our companies and convince our organizations and to convince our government and convince our media our universities are you trade unions everybody that this is important that this is an asset that we have as a country and that we don't put in place strategies and policies and programs and projects were missing a terrific opportunity and let me leave you with a concept I believe there's such a thing as a diaspora galaxy and just imagine the home country is the Sun and all these people around the world are these kind of twinkling stars and the objective is to network between the Sun and the stars and to get them to create connect and collaborate as never before and the glue and all of this is to have some fun in the process so my final message to you is the definition of a real Irishman is somebody our woman is somebody who doesn't go to bed the same day they get up and I have a feeling that we have a lot of real Irishmen our real Irish women on lithuanian men and women here tonight so ladies and gentlemen i finished by saying go forth and diaspora eyes a true

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 22,764

Rating: 4.8496242 out of 5

Keywords: tedx talk, English, Community, Ireland, Kingsley Aikins, tedx, Global Issues, TEDx, ted talk, ted x, Lithuania, Social Change, Relationships, ted, Networking, ted talks, tedx talks, Diaspora, CASE, TEDxVilnius

Id: yQ_y5LgM7D0

Length: 17min 5sec (1025 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 25 2014