Enter To Transform – Transformational Entrepreneurship Hubs for Recognized Refugee Re-Starters
In order to sustain and strengthen growth and innovation in North-West Europe (NWE), business start-ups by Recognized Refugees (RRs) have great potential and offer RRs a perspective that enables their livelihood and social participation in European societies. The project contributes to increasing the number of business start-ups by refugees in NWE by improving the entrepreneurial skills of refugees and the capacity of institutions supporting refugees. The target group is the 67% of the 271,630 RR in the Netherlands, Germany, Ireland and France (Eurostat, 2017) who have an entrepreneurial background and sufficient experience to start a new business.
The project develops social innovations to make RR who want to start their own business fit to start a business. RR with business experience in their home country bring great potential for a new start but need specific mentoring to navigate the NWE economy. The project creates a supportive environment of hubs that act as ‘door openers’ for RR start-ups through mentoring so that they can become part of the existing entrepreneurial infrastructure. Through the emerging networks, the project avoids parallel structures. RRs receive the tools they need to get started in an environment that is new to them.
In North Rhine-Westphalia, the Initiative Wirtschaftsdialog NRW (www.wirtschaftsdialog.org) has emerged from the project together with local network partners and is an important building block for the sustainability of the project.
FIAP is trying to implement the approaches and concepts developed in other European countries where refugees are looking for new perspectives.
