LaunchGood
Organized by ashraf.abumaraq

Karaz, Sex Ed for the Middle East

$670

raised of $15,000 USD goal

16 supporters, Project Closed
Closed

Impact: Ramallah, Ramallah

Verification in progress. Learn More

This campaign will collect all funds raised by June 29, 2015 at 3:45 AM EDT

Breaking the Taboo


A Palestinian Startup for the World

My name is Ashraf Alkiswani, a Palestinian American living in Philadelphia. Two years ago, while overseas my team and I setup Karaz headquartered in Palestine, a reproductive health and sexual education platform for a Middle Eastern and Muslim audience. We wanted to create a site for engaged or married men and women to turn to whenever they had any questions regarding relationships, including sexual relationships, from the safety and anonymity of their own homes.  We want a person to be able to go to this one site and find everything they needed to know about sex from a medical and psychological standpoint, without any profanity, nudity, or sexualization.  Just facts. So far, Karaz has made tremendous achievements and helped countless people: we have over 60,000 unique visitors every month, 60% of which are women. We're looking forward to continued growth and expand the work we do, making an even more positive social impact on individuals and the society.


What’s the Big Deal?

SEX!  It's this elusive topic that nobody feels comfortable talking about it, and in the Middle East, its even more taboo!  So, Karaz has built an online platform to provide sex education and marital advice in both English and Arabic.
Sex is often misconstrued as "Haram" or "forbidden" and it is barely mentioned in schools because 1). Its not even in the curriculum and 2). when the subject comes up in Biology, teachers skip it and tell their students to read it at home because they are either too embarrassed or shy to talk about this in the classroom.  Parents tend to avoid the subject altogether until the week before the honeymoon and then they fill their sons and daughters heads with crazy talk. This means that many individuals, even married couples, form a skewed view of sex and sexuality. Over 80% of the population gets no sexual education, while 80% of google searches are sexual in nature. Infidelity is on the rise, and divorce rates are increasing. This is why our project was created.  


But why Launch Good?

Until now, Karaz's entirety has been essentially a self-funded project (with some love and support from family and friends), made with the help of lots of talented people who worked for pennies on the dollar and we were only able to focus on Karaz between our other jobs, which has delayed many of our awesome initiatives. Continuing at this pace is detrimental to society...considering the Muslim population is growing and people are getting married daily! BUT, if successful, Karaz will be able to grow the team, be able to provide more content and to build more partnerships with more experts on the subject. Not only will we be providing online articles, but we will be able to take our creative and innovative liberty to provide more ways to help, from webinars, guest appearances to one on one sessions with our visitors. This will allow us to dedicate all of our concentration and efforts into expanding Karaz and making it even better. But to do that, we need your help. $25,000 might seem like a lot of money, but the running costs of a website might not be obvious. If you donate, you'll be helping us provide essential services to a potential audience of hundreds of millions of people, and continue to make a positive contribution to sexual health to the Muslim world. Here's a very brief summary of where the money will go:



1).  Providing additional reproductive health and sexual education content for a Middle Eastern audience.


2).  Hiring a team of Palestinian superstars to help grow the business, while simultaneously offering job opportunities country with over 28% unemployment.


3).  Introducing alternative forms of content such as video interviews with doctors and therapists as well as animated educational videos to help those with burning questions they are too embarrassed to ask.


4). Launch a platform for live one-on-one consultation to give people access to doctors and therapists with hopes to offer people the help that they need and to reduce the ever-growing divorce rates and cases of infidelity.

We Need Your Support

Check out our perks! Please keep in mind that you are not "purchasing" our perks, but rather receiving it as a token of our appreciation for your love and support. 


Karazified  - Our T-shirts were uniquely designed by the Karaz team.  You can choose between a black or white t-shirt and will need to specify your size (S, M, L, XL and XXL) Choose from one of the designs below:


Consultancy - The Karaz team is working diligently to bring a live private and discreet one-on-one consultation platform to their website.  After launching Karaz a little over a year ago, the number of questions we received was sizeable.  With the help of volunteer doctors and therapists, we were able to respond to these questions and really help these individuals with their concerns. This perk is for one (1) thirty minute coupon for a live one-on-one live consultation with one of our experts upon completion of the online platform. With your help in solidifying 50 online consultancy sessions, this will help us speed up the fulfillment of the platform to just under 3 months.


Love is in the Air - Surprise your spouse with this amazing starter package to enhance intimacy in the bedroom! This bundle includes lubricant, scented rose petals, bath salts, a massage candle and a Kama Sutra card game for lovers!


Lovers Touch - This package has all you need to give your spouse a sensual massage. Including massage oil, massage candle, flavored massage lotion and a magic massage wand.


Hopeless Romantic - Let your romantic side surface with this package. This bundle includes a massage candle, 52 weeks of romance scratch cards, dark chocolate wanderlust kit, bubble bath, massage oil, plastic massager, flavored body topping, linen spray, rose petals and tealight.


Silver Hero - Get the Hopeless Romantic package and have your name listed amongst the Sponsors of our Mobile apps (upon completion). Also, gain early access to download and navigate our mobile apps.  Suggest mobile app ideas relevant to our cause as well as special features you would like to see on the apps.


Gold Hero - Get the everything in the Silver Hero perk, as well as being listed as one of the Video Producers for our educational video series. By being a Golden Hero you are bringing one video (from idea to fruition) to life. Each video will be published on our website and YouTube for maximum exposure.  As a Video Producer, be the inspiration for the next video in the series. Lend us your creativity and help us help those in need.


Platinum Hero - Get everything in our Golden Hero package and earn a seat on Karaz's board of advisors for one year! Help Karaz help the people and get involved with the overall direction of our Startup!


About Ashraf

Ashraf was born and raised in Akron Ohio.  He graduated from Kent State University with a degree in Finance.  After graduation, he moved to Dubai and worked as a Financial Analyst for 2 years and then he moved to Palestine.  While living in Palestine, Ashraf wore many hats, he taught English as a foreign language, and offered TOEFL (Test of English as Foreign Language) courses to help his fellow Palestinian pass the test and gain admissions to Bachelors and Masters programs abroad.  He also worked on various educational programs such as the Model Schools Network that provided support to 57 schools across the West Bank and Gaza, and the Cisco Entrepreneur Institute, where he managed a program that taught courses on how to Start, Grow and IT enable a business.  Ashraf started his first entrepreneurial project by creating an online platform for his mother to market her homemade baked goods in Ramallah Palestine. The idea behind Karaz sparked after visiting so many villages throughout Palestine and hearing so many sad stories. After dealing with so many government officials in the Ministry of Education and Ministry Health pertaining to the programs above, Ashraf began doing his own research in neighboring countries regarding reproductive health and sexual education in the Middle East. 

About Omar


Omar is a Palestinian living in Munich Germany. He is from a beautiful village called Jatt, Married and with his wife are expecting their first child. Omar is currently doing his Masters in Computer Science from the Munich University of Applied Sciences.

He is very passionate about technology and development of new, creative and innovative ideas.  He loves a challenge and doesn't believe in the "impossible" and also lives life with a "take the bull by the horns" mentality. Omar was eager to join the Karaz team because he also saw Ashrafs vision.  He has now become an ambassador in helping to change the negative prejudices about sexuality in Islam and the Middle East and to take the initiative globally.

About Salam

Salam was born in Chicago Illinois, and grew up in Akron Ohio.  She attended the school of Journalism at Kent State University and graduated with honors.  Since graduation she's worked as a freelance journalist, PR specialist and university instructor.  Salam is happily married with three beautiful boys ages 5, 11, and 13.  Four years ago, Salam and her husband opened an import and export business for fast moving consumer goods in Palestine and they import items from all around the globe.  But since Salam has a passion for both writing and Karaz's mission,  she joined the Karaz team in its early stages and has a major role in the creation of written material (in addition to our team of freelance writers).  

About Ahmad

Ahmad is a fusion of Palestine and Romania and is the teams Social Media and Marketing guy. He holds a bachelor's degree in Business Administration and Marketing from Birzeit University.  Ahmad joined Karaz fresh after graduation and turned down many opportunities with other companies and institutes because he believed that Karaz is one of the most promising and innovative startups to surface in Palestine. He loves a good challenge and what better way to start your career off than with the startup set out to break cultural taboos and provide sexual education to the MENA region?

Other Ways You Can Help

We want to thank everyone for visiting our LaunchGood campaign.  Although we know and understand that not everyone can contribute, but everyone can make a difference. By sharing this LaunchGood campaign, our website (www.karaz.me), Facebook page (www.facebook.com/karazshop) or our twitter page (www.twitter.com/karazshop) with your friends and family on your social media pages, and help us help spread the word about Karaz, our campaign and most importantly our cause.

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