JUST
the job Charlie Fraser is co-founder of a social enterprise called The Entrepreneurial Refugee Network (TERN), helping refugees to thrive
WHAT DOES TERN DO?
We help refugees to turn great ideas into dynamic businesses. Initially we were looking to simply fund refugee start-ups but then we discovered there was no targeted business support for the refugee community, so that’s when we switched course and decided to provide just that. We’ve put just over 450 refugees through our business support programme in the last five years. Icons from the thenounproject.com - Love Home by MOHAMMED SALIM
WHERE DID THE IDEA COME FROM?
I am one of four founders and we’ve all had experiences with the refugee diaspora and were interested in the reality that refugees face when it comes to obtaining a livelihood in the UK. We felt that the philanthropic focus was too often on the crisis element of the refugee situation, and while this was triggering an amazing humanitarian response, it was creating a backlash too, with others seeing refugees as a danger and/or a
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burden to the economy. We wanted to re-frame the refugee community as a population with potential.
HOW DOES YOUR PROGRAMME WORK?
It has three elements. The first stage is a pre-incubator. A lot of refugees are very experienced in business – about 70% have started or managed businesses outside of the UK – but when they come to us many are exploring if self-employment is the right route for them to take in the UK. The pre-incubator aims to help them to make an informed decision. It’s an intensive programme and every refugee is paired with a mentor and offered employment too. About two thirds of entrepreneurs go onto the second stage, the Business Incubator, which takes five to six months and is focused on them launching a business and trading sustainably. At this point they have an idea they want to take to market. We give them information on business
finance, customer service, building a brand and a website and all the other fundamentals they will need in place to get a business off the ground. The last stage of our support is called On-Demand and comprises flexible one-on-one business advice focused on solving problems. It takes a long time to build a business so we need to be able to provide sustained support and connection. All our business support is free and funded primarily from corporate partnerships. The remaining third of funding comes from grants and donations, including the EU’s Asylum Migration and Integration fund Our pre-incubator has scaled into four cities in three countries with the help of other entrepreneur training organisations, who we support with our training content and materials.
HOW DO REFUGEES FIND YOU?
At the start we reached out to organisations already working with
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