This Reuters article illustrates the desire of refugees to build lives and redefine the perception of refugees through entrepreneurship. RIN Managing Director Tim Docking, featured in the article, adds “this is a very entrepreneurial, hardworking, gritty group of folks who want to work, versus get handouts, and need investment capital to get going.”
Reuters covers entrepreneurs redefining the image of refugees, featuring the RIN’s Tim Docking and our work with 734 Coffee.
Hola Code is a software engineering program focused on integrating former migrants who returned or were deported to Mexico.
After escaping human trafficking, Sirojiddin returned home to start a bakery said to serve some of the best naan in the region.
Worldwide, nearly 70 million people have been forcibly displaced. The need for long-term, sustainable solutions to uplift refugees and support their host communities has never been more acute. This new study from Bridgespan and the International Finance Corporation explores five ways the private sector can help and features the RIN’s framework for defining, qualifying, and targeting refugee investments.
3IM is a new cross-sector, cross-border partnership that will attract long-term strategic growth capital for investments in Mexico through the inclusion of displaced people in economic development projects. 3IM will foster new venture creation and the expansion of employment, workforce development, and skills matching to create thousands of jobs and enrich the entrepreneurial ecosystem in Mexico while also reducing unemployment and displacement.
A refugee from Syria who moved to the United States three years ago with his wife and two daughters, Abdulraheem has learned to embrace the interest the community has in not only his food, but his background as well.
“I like to share my food and my country with people here. This food is my country,” he says.
For Sam Bashiry, an emotional breakdown outside Centrelink and a $1000 second-hand purchase became a $25 million-a-year success story.
As Devex reports, most investors don’t see refugees as bankable or investable, but that’s something the Refugee Investment Network wants to change. A record 68.5 million people are forcibly displaced, both within their countries or across borders, and those numbers are likely to rise. The team behind RIN said their goal is to change the narrative around refugees, from a burden on society to an economic opportunity, and to drive more impact investment and blended finance deals toward long-term solutions to global forced migration.
Pakistani authorities are beginning to legally register Afghan refugees for open bank accounts and help them become part of the country’s formal economy.
Forbes’ Devin Thorpe interviews John Kluge, founder and managing director of the Refugee Investment Network, about the importance of refugee investments. “If you’re displaced for decades and you are not allowed to work and not allowed to move freely (as is the case for millions of refugees and displaced people around the world), you are not living. You are surviving,” Kluge says, noting that he sees this as a social justice issue.
Ethiopia’s recent law gives almost 1 million refugees the right to work and live outside of camps.
