Pictured: Basim Salim during his TEDx Talk
Instructor Basim Salim brings a unique blend of marketing expertise, nonprofit leadership experience, worldliness, and a zeal for humanitarian causes to the University of Guelph-Humber’s Media & Communication Studies (MCS) program.
Drawing on his background in the corporate sector, his work with the registered charity Action for Humanity Canada, and international experience gained while living in Jordan, Salim provides students with nuanced perspectives that bridge strategic communication and marketing with real-world social impact.
“As an instructor, my role is working for people. It’s transforming the lives of people. And when you work for a humanitarian organization, you’re very much connected with the people who you’re serving and you’re aware of the people whose lives you are trying to change,” Salim said.
At Action for Humanity Canada, which delivers life-saving aid amid humanitarian crises worldwide, Salim is the head of marketing and communications, responsible for leading integrated marketing campaigns across multiple social media platforms for the charity's offices around the world. Through storytelling, his goal is to ensure donor engagement and increase sustainable funding for humanitarian projects and programs across the globe.
For instance, Sudan’s 2023 civil war left citizens in need of aid, so the organization set a goal to fundraise $225,000 to establish a community kitchen. Marketing efforts by Salim and his team brought awareness to the crisis and inspired people to donate to the cause.
The organization fed 1,500 households a day across five community kitchens in Sudan, he said. “When we put together a marketing campaign, it's not just about the KPIs [key performance indicators] … It looks like, ‘How many people did we feed? How much clothing did we provide? How many shelters did we build?’” he said. “[Working for] a humanitarian organization is something that allows me to tap into my motivation of helping and serving people.”
This passion was always at the core of Salim’s career. He moved to Jordan to study Arabic abroad on a scholarship and to immerse himself in traditional Arab culture and traditions. Being situated in the Middle East for over seven years, helped him "understand the role of culture, the role of language, the role of the historical background that people are coming from and how that impacts their worldview," he said, and led him to deliver a TEDxMcMasterU Talk, “Empathy in Every Accent.”
This experience abroad, as presented during the TEDx Talk, challenged biases he once held. It brought him to communities filled with kindness and humanity, Salim explained, which broadened his perspective because through interacting with people, he realized they had far more in common than he had initially believed.
Salim hopes students can learn from his lived experiences as a professional and as a global citizen.
“I take my experience first and then connect it with the theoretical concepts that are being taught within the classroom,” Salim said.
After all, his aim is to engage learners and inspire them to find meaning in whichever career path they choose.
To learn more about what the University of Guelph-Humber’s Media & Communication Studies program has to offer, click here.