That’s because I was going to be on the beach in Phuket on Boxing Day 2004 when the Tsunami hit at 10.58am (3.58am GMT). And I still struggle to this day with the ‘random’ events that lead me away from the Tsunami to a place of safety.

Rewind to November 2004 and I’d just resigned from the corporate sector with a vision to tackle systemic unemployment and poverty. I’d also decided I was going to ask my girlfriend to marry me and I’d ask her somewhere abroad – and Thailand was the chosen destination. An itinerary was created that would have taken us to Phuket on Boxing Day.

Before leaving for Thailand I visited a chiropractor for pains in my neck. He asked me what I was doing for Christmas and I excitedly shared my itinerary – and as soon as I said Boxing Day Phuket he stopped and said I shouldn’t go there. Head East instead. He couldn’t explain why – just a feeling.

Being a logical person a feeling wouldn’t change the plan so off to Thailand we went with everything still in place. The night before we were due to travel on to Phuket a random stranger started to chat with us and asked where we were heading. When I said Boxing Day Phuket he said the same thing to head East.

Discounting this second person again (why should we change course?) we headed off to Phuket the next day, but this time the feeling was mine. An overwhelming sense of not continuing our journey to Phuket – and then, remembering the two suggestions to head East, we did. Onto an island called Kao Tao.

We never knew the tsunami hit until 7 hours afterwards. We both called our parents who of course thought we had died as they knew we planned to be in Phuket on Boxing Day – only we knew our last minute change of plans. I was numb knowing how close we came to being there – and also because of the ‘random’ events that helped us to survive.

Was it divine intervention? God working through those strangers to influence our direction away from the Tsunami? How could it – I was an atheist, had been since I was 16 after by brother died. God doesn’t save atheists…does he? And of course there is no way I’m more important than any of the 300,000 people who died that day.

Or was it lady luck? But how did those strangers know to suggest we go East as the Tsunami only devastated the West coast of Thailand? And also my own overwhelming sense of not going to Phuket?

It’s hard to believe 300,000 people died that day. So many people and we would have been there also. I resolved to go back home and never give up on the mission to tackle systemic unemployment and poverty no matter how hard it would get. I’d ensure this chance to live on would mean something.

That resolve was really tested four years later in 2008 when I was pushed into poverty for 12 months because a business defaulted on £75,000 they owed us and the development of Whitebox Digital froze (see blog ‘From a rich lifestyle to eating in soup kitchens’).

I could have ended the pain I was in that year at any time – just decide not to continue tackling systemic unemployment and poverty, close down the company and go back to earning a high salary and re-obtain the rich life I’d left behind in November 2004.

But I couldn’t do that. And there’s 300,000 reasons why I never could.

He also talked about the impending war in Iran, how our welfare system would be stronger if we weren’t at war in Iraq and Afghanistan and how at 16 years old when unemployed and writing to theatre companies to try and get work he was told to get lost once they found out he was in a wheelchair.

He wasn’t saying this at Speakers Corner in Hyde Park, or camped out at St. Paul’s, but in fact at the third Leonard Cheshire Ability Media awards as he picked up his Fellowship Award. Everyone in the audience were silent and hypnotised throughout his political speech – either shocked by his using such a platform for political purposes or blown away by what he had to say.

For me, I drifted for a split second into a parallel world where all social issues had been fixed and we had a fully functioning global government, business and civil society where it all worked. The System that is – where there’s no more police pepper-spraying students having their say in a democracy or where 50% of UK disabled people don’t have a job. Everyone works now in the perfect world – and by choice.

Listening to Nabil talk about his struggles to find work and having to setup a theatre company to create jobs for people who are disabled twenty-one years ago is the same as all the social enterprises being setup by single issue founders today to help employ people just like themselves – ex-offenders, ex-addicts, ex-everything. But doing that doesn’t solve the real problem that a modern workplace should be shared by people from all social backgrounds working together. A real community.

I’ve employed lots of people in my time who had what people would call disabilities but I never saw that – just the work I needed doing and finding the best candidate for the job. No discrimination either way – just matching need with those that can meet it. I don’t think anyone should have the indignity of being given work for any other reason than because they can do it.

And what a workforce – when you’ve built a team from all social backgrounds working together is such a pleasure to watch and work with – and the productive outputs are amazing based on the physical, ethnic and cognitive diversity of the team assembled. The strongest businesses of tomorrow will look just like this.

I feel the socialist handbook around disabilities needs to be re-written (or thrown away) and I’m excited about the journey towards the perfect world because everyone from any social background will be taking part and able to work to their abilities and strengths aligned with the needs of markets and employers – that’s a society I’d say is worth fighting for Nabil Shaban.

24 years ago, I was 16 years old, unemployed and living in a poor community in Manchester.

My parents couldn’t afford to send me to college so I had to try and find work which wasn’t easy in a place of high unemployment and lack of opportunities. I imagined a career for myself in hi-tech – and still remember my careers teacher telling me to forget it because of where I was from.

Last week, 24 years later, I was invited to speak at the MBA Association of Ireland business lunch at Hillsborough Castle, Belfast, where the Queen stays on visits to Northern Ireland and where the Good Friday agreement was signed. What was it that enabled an unemployed 16-year-old to break out of unemployment and end up being invited to speak at a prestigious event for senior business leaders?

The answer, I feel, is also the solution to today’s economic crisis and the problem of high unemployment and lack of job creation on both a national and global level. The last 24 years I’ve propelled myself forward purely based on know-how and having access to the knowledge economy. And the good news about this is: it doesn’t matter where you live.

In fact, the invention of the internet solved the root problem of unemployment, namely being born in the wrong place. Genetically you’re just as good as the person with the career – it’s just that they were born near the market and you weren’t. However, with the knowledge economy and the internet you can work from anywhere in the world – with the economy irrigated to where you are.

Therefore, solving the ongoing economic crisis and the resulting lack of opportunity isn’t a political problem or one which requires a government solution. It needs smarter business – opening multiple branch offices across the UK, across the EU or across the world, rather than vertically into a single building or region. It’s about re-designing business process and using growth to target unemployment hotspots and breathing life into economic deserts.

And that’s why I speak at places like the MBA Association. It’s great to see amazing historical places such as Hillsborough Castle in Belfast and hang out with the Queen (nearly). But what matters is spreading the word about smarter business growth – to set more people free from systemic barriers to have careers they were told they could never have – just like I was told 24 years ago.

Future Jobs Fund really does work. I know it does firstly because we’re taking part and have evidence of it working after creating 233 employment opportunities in 7 towns and cities across the UK in the last ten months. Seeing the lack of self-confidence of so many people prior to life-changing opportunities under the Future Jobs Fund and then seeing them on their graduation day, totally transformed, shows that the Future Jobs Fund constituted a winning formula.

The second reason I know Future Jobs Fund works is because it’s a repeat of the same process that rescued me from long-term unemployment 24 years ago when I was 16 years old and told I couldn’t have a career in hi-tech. Back then it wasn’t called Future Jobs Fund but Youth Training Scheme (YTS) – a programme funded by government to help employers hire unemployed young people and train them. The same as Future Jobs Fund.

There were the usual critics saying that employers would exploit us young people for cheap labour – but the people saying that were employed and in a career. For us it was a way out – a chance to be trained by experts, prove ourselves and start careers. And that we did – in our thousands. It was a formula that was working – but rather than take it and keep replicating the success it was eventually cancelled.

Seeing what happened with the Youth Training Scheme and now the Future Jobs Fund makes me realise we need a better way of driving a successful welfare-to-work model that can scale and replicate and never stop. To achieve that therefore we need to create a market-led approach that creates these opportunities without always needing government intervention for employers to get involved.

So the call to arms is for employers of all enterprises to rise-up together and create a manifesto to get involved and find a way to achieve this. It is possible – but of course we can’t do it on the extreme capitalism model that has plagued this past decade (which most businesses don’t take part in but have been tarnished by).

If we can align market makers with the needs of society and link it to people suffering from unemployment we can re-design business processes and state aid projects to better work together – and once a solution has been found that works we can replicate it at a cost that gets lower over time whilst increasing success. It’ll be a global solution as well linked to global needs.

The good news is that the current market and social conditions in the world shows a logical need for this re-alignment and therefore one day soon we will have the momentum to achieve the above. And then everyone will be able to enjoy a career and never suffer the damage caused by long-term unemployment and lack of opportunities.

A recent study in the North of England showed that one in seven 16-24 year old  ’NEETs’ - those not in Education, Employment or Training – died within ten years of falling out of the system. Following this report Jon Coles, the director general of schools, said he was ‘profoundly shocked’.

21 years ago I was NEET myself at 16 living in a poor community in the North of England. Opportunities were scarce and I had to teach myself new skills and then was lucky enough to find a small business that gave me an opportunity on the old Youth Training Scheme. This apprenticeship started my journey out of poverty.

My friends at the time were not so lucky. Going back to my school at 24, 8 years later, I found out that a number of my fresh-faced school friends, who also became NEET at 16, were in prison, on hard drugs or had in fact died. Even 21 years later the same systemic problems still exist.

With the recession set to get worse, more needs to be done to tackle this problem. Not just by government and charities – but by businesses. Business has what it takes to lift people out of poverty, just like a small business did for me 21 years ago.

Of course business can’t do it alone – we have to work in partnership with government and charities – and the recent launch of the Future Jobs Fund is a good step forward in this direction, but only if the jobs created are in fact real jobs linked to growth and future income – otherwise it’s a temporary fix.

Whitebox is getting involved in this area and will be driving our own apprenticeship programme and we are
looking for more small and medium-sized business who want to get involved in helping ensure our young people have a chance to live a productive life.

Please email me if you would like to work together.

This blog entry references article posted in the Daily Telegraph on 7th August 2009:

'Neets' failure shocks civil servant

We’ve captured some of the rough sleepers stories on video so you can see what it is like to be homeless and on the streets when you don’t have a drug, alcohol or mental health problem. It’s hard to believe it happens today – we’ve even met married couples sleeping in Sainsbury’s car park.

Our communities need to come together to solve the issue of homelessness as it will only get worse with the financial crisis. Through bringing together local authorities, businesses, charities and faith organisations to work together in their spheres of influence we really can start to make a difference.

However I was unsettled. Living in a world where unemployment and poverty was getting worse globally year after year, I decided to take a handbrake turn off the corporate highway, sold my assets and start a journey to see if I could get involved and help.

In 2005 I witnessed many things including 260 people shivering in doorways in winter in a rich London borough as well as married couples sleeping rough in Sainsbury’s car-park. I also met many ex-professionals eating and staying in rough sleeper hostels and soup kitchens.

What struck me is many of them didn’t have any addiction issues and seemed to spiral from incidents of redundancy and worklessness. And then there was ex small-business owners who crashed because clients didn’t pay them on time when they were financially able to.

So here they are – trapped in homeless shelters and looked down on by society – and yet a year ago they were in society, with homes, with jobs and living a life we all aspire to have. It dawned on me that this really is something that can happen to anyone.

And then it happened to me. Fast-forward a few years and during 2008 I ate in soup kitchens myself six times – with the staff recognising me as the person who just a few years earlier was researching unemployment and poverty with a passion to end it.

The reason was simple – a corporate client I was producing a project for in 2007 defaulted on £75,000 they owed – and in turn I owed to the supply chain I’d built for them to deliver a complex project. It was David versus the Goliath of a global procurement company. And that meant the development of Whitebox Digital also froze as the money I was making was being used to fund its development.

So that was it – immersed into extreme poverty by a business not paying what they owed even though they could pay. A similar story to what I’d heard by others in homeless shelters during my research but now I’d experienced it first hand and the social damage these decisions cause.

I tried to get a loan from the bank but this was recession year so all lending froze. The only way out was to trade – which I tried to do but with the recession it was near impossible to do so – and when the money kept running out I was back in soup kitchens for food. After 12 months I still hadn’t sorted the problem out and it looked like it could be the end of the road for me and the mission I was on.

And then a miracle happened. A philanthropist heard my testimony about how I’d left the corporate sector to tackle poverty and about the chain of events that unfolded and threatened to stop me in my tracks. Even though I wasn’t a charity he transferred £75,000 into my bank account the following Monday so I could continue the journey. And that I will.

I don’t regret the last 12 months – in fact I learned so much more both about who I am as a person and also that business done badly causes many of the social problems around us. But the good news is if that’s the case then imagine what an army of good businesses could do to change the world for the better. I look forward to when that day comes.

Onwards.

Addendum (added 26/12/2011): Friends and family asked me why during these 12 months of hardship and soup kitchens in 2008 when there didn’t look like a way out I didn’t just give up, close the company and go back to being employed on a high salary and to the rich lifestyle I left behind. The reason is now explained in this blog: ‘Today is the 7th anniversary of the Thailand Tsunami…“)