RIN Feature

On World Refugee Day, RIN gathers investors, entrepreneurs, humanitarian leaders, and donors to bridge the gap between capital and refugee-owned or -supporting ventures.

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.”

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.

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.

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.

RIN Managing Directors, John Kluge and Tim Docking, co-authored an article in the Stanford Social Innovation Review on how investment can unlock the potential of refugees and help propel economic development.

RIN Managing Directors, John Kluge and Tim Docking, shed light on how the private sector can change the narrative surrounding refugees. The RIN’s recently released report, “Paradigm Shift: How investment can unlock the potential of refugees” illustrates the massive and urgent need for private capital to help mitigate the refugee crisis. Perhaps more importantly, however, it highlights a growing, sustainable opportunity for investors to engage.

Bloomberg interviews John Kluge, Refugee Investment Network founder, about the refugee investment space. John Kluge and his team seek to mobilize $1 billion by 2030 for investments in refugee-led and refugee-supporting businesses to benefit forcibly displaced communities.

A recent report from the new Refugee Investment Network defines what ought to qualify as a refugee investment – in terms of ownership, impact, or management. RIN describes itself as a groundbreaking “impact investing and blended finance collaborative”. Its study gets ahead of controversial clichés like entrepreneurial refugees to analyze what a range of market players deem investable and what type of connective tissue is needed.

John Kluge and Tim Docking believe that the key to unlocking innovative solutions that help refugees is increased capital investment. Their organization, the Refugee Investment Network (RIN), is the first blended finance investment collaborative dedicated to creating long-term solutions to global forced migration.