A Trusted Network For Tunisians Abroad

Not wanting to live in Tunisia myself, I’ve been thinking of a structure that will try to solve my dilemma for the hundreds of thousands of Tunisians abroad. If you are one of them and haven’t read the previous article, I suggest you do so before starting this one.

In an informal society, trust is built on top of networks of people. This new structure will have a single mission: provide a trusted network for Tunisian abroad. It will start by tackling the most important problem: taking care of your parents who are still living in the country. Its goal is not to take them in charge completely and disrupt their lives. Instead, it will provide you with a substitute Essential Network that won’t get thinner with time. You can rely on this network for the small things and you can use its vetted partners to solve bigger problems once they show up. What it can start by doing, is to handle the mundane yet important tasks of:

• Providing IT services to help manage internet and electronic devices.
• Keeping track of their psychological health by checking in on them frequently.
• Scheduling doctor check-in every few months.
• Providing a point of contact and emergency intervention in case of a problem.
• Providing punctual services such as helping them buy groceries or move heavy objects.
• Providing access to vetted professionals with good track records and transparent fees.

As a Tunisian immigrant, you get to pay a flat monthly fee in your local currency (euros, dollars, etc) and extra fees might be required for some services based on a consumption model. You can even use the receipts to get tax rebates from your host country.

For this structure to exist, it has to overcome two main challenges: building a financial bridge between the outside world and Tunisia and building a network of trustworthy individuals that would be its foundation.

Trust is the most important cultural value for this structure. At its essence, It’s a structure that provides trust as a service. Its members will be coming to your home and spending unsupervised time with your parents. The main initial challenge is to get you to trust these strangers inside your homes. Here, the structure must provide the right incentives for its members. The best way to ensure trustworthiness is to make the structure a great place to be for these individuals. For its members, the thought of being cast out should be unbearable. I think members should be generously paid, especially those at the lowest echelons. At least 50% more than the market average is a must. Good management, a decent workload, help with career progression, and internal social programs would make it an even greater place to be. Internally, the structure should provide a social ladder for people to climb on and have a swing at a decent living. The more these people believe in the project, have good pay and have great future opportunities, the least likely they are to throw it all away by breaking our trust, risk being cast out and face legal action.

To have the means to build trust, the structure needs to rely on stable finances. It needs to be able to stand on its feet without requiring handouts from other organisations. Elderly care is a notoriously difficult worldwide problem to solve. A recurrent nightmare for western individuals is to run out of money before running out of life and hence become a burden on their offspring. Yet, due to the wage gap between western society and Tunisia, the problem becomes more approachable. It becomes possible to provide labour-intensive services that would be extremely expensive to get where you live for a fraction of the price. Your monthly subscription would be the foundation on which the structure will stand. You get clear fees that are shielded from the inflation of the Tunisian market, and the structure gets to pay people decent wages in Tunisian standards. High wages become possible because of a stable money influx coming from outside of the country in a stronger and more stable currency.

Through the right incentives, a structure that provides trust as a service can exist in Tunisia. It could tackle a broad set of social problems and provide opportunities to people in marginalized sectors such as human sciences or social services. It will be a door through which Tunisian abroad can access the informal local economy with transparent fees. It can be the partner for Tunisians abroad that will help them take care of their affairs in the country.