“I don’t know where I belong”, “I am too Arab or not Arab enough”, “I’m a third culture kid”. Some of us have made these statements in college essays, others use them to inspire their content or art, and many may eye-roll because we’ve heard this cliché way too many times from those living in the diaspora.
I am guilty of all three. I know it’s cliché, but it also poses a real question about identity and understanding what really makes us feel like this.
Now, what happens when the question of identity is at a time in our lives when we desperately want to grow and develop personally? Maybe it’s a career switch, perhaps a romantic love we are figuring out or trying to make sense of barriers and learning how to break them. It’s really the “what should I do?” stage in our lives. Trite advice of “you do you” might not capture the nuances of our unique journeys.
This is surely a problem many face, no?
And of course like most people nowadays, I thought the solution was…
YouTube. To be fair, if it was 2020 and not 2017, I would have likely said TikTok.
On August 27, 2017, I brought a few friends over to record a YouTube talk show without really thinking much of it. I called it “Yalla! Let’s Talk”. I thought the name had a ring to it.
I was still a law student at the time. I set up the Dhs1,500 camera I bought from my summer student savings, arranged the chairs in my dining room, and put Turkish coffee and baklava to give it a “feel”, which in hindsight, was a tad extra.
I hit record. Boom.
20 minutes in, the camera stopped working, and when we fixed it, we realized that the microphone wasn’t working either. We fixed it, but this time, the footage wasn’t imported properly.
The dream of a YouTube series quickly dwindled. But I remembered how the conversations made me feel – I felt heard. I could relate to a lot of the struggles my friends were sharing.
I couldn’t shake off that curiosity to learn more about people’s stories, particularly those who may relate to the struggles of being “children of immigrants” or simply just living in the diaspora.
One year later, I reached out to one of my best friends and we worked closely to turn “Yalla! Let’s Talk” into an event series. I thought, maybe we change the plan, not the goal.
With the support of the Candian Arab Institute, Yalla! Let’s Talk, went on to become an initiative bringing hundreds of people in Canada, US, and the UK inside local cafes and facilitating topics on self-development. From discussing expectations to helping us make sense of defining our values, we grew with our YLT community.
As we found our groove, the pandemic hit and we had to adapt.
Our events became virtual, providing our community with a virtual space to tackle topics together. The pandemic also sparked an interest for us to start creating and curating content on social media and we even began an online publication.
Simultaneously, I noticed the idea of an “Arab POV” becoming immensely popular on social media. By working with content creators, I slowly began to fall in love with the creator economy, it was exciting. Seeing the opportunity to help create a much-needed representation, coupled with building a new ecosystem that creators and brands would benefit from, I founded “Yalla” (www.yalla.co) – a new-age media and influencer marketing company. Soon we started working with record labels, brands, and creatives to build content while bridging the gap between MENA and the diaspora.
Yalla became a company whereas Yalla! Let’s Talk. morphed into a channel under Yalla, with a clear mission still in mind: amplify the voices of the diaspora and those living in MENA who could relate, the same voices that typically go unseen.
On August 27th, 2022, exactly 5 years after our first attempt to create a show, we began shooting the video podcast. It was a full-circle moment.
As the host of the podcast, I have designed it to help people figure things out. We explore topics on self-development and share “real” stories. Some of the guests we have had on the podcast so far include content creators Maya Hussein and Saif Shawaf, Jordanian Artist Zeyne, and human rights activist Yafa Jarrar.
In the very first episodes of the podcast, we explored “The Reality of Content Creators’ Mental Health”, “Relationships and Toxic Friends”, and the concept of resilience in many forms.
Yalla! Let’s Talk. as a channel, also boasts other content that we proudly create – street interviews and news with incredible content creators.
You can find our podcast on many streaming platforms, including Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Anghami, as well as YouTube. yallaletstalk.com
As seen in Cosmo ME’s winter issue, click here to read more