Frederic is a London-based Social Entrepreneur promoting refugee economic integration in Europe and East Africa. Frederic is a co-founder and co-director of TERN – The Entrepreneurial Refugee Network – an incubator programme for refugee entrepreneurs in the UK.
Frederic has 5 years’ experience in humanitarian and social entrepreneurial innovation, having consulted for the UN Refugee Agency on livelihoods innovation for 3 years in both high income and poverty contexts.
Frederic is experienced in design thinking methodologies, in mobilising business and specialist mentoring networks and in connecting incubator initiatives with microfinance propositions. Frederic generally applies a multi-sectoral approach to livelihoods innovation, fostering effective cooperation between public, private and social enterprise actors. Frederic’s biggest passion is to collaborate with refugees with leadership ambitions who take part in trainings of trainers and deliver interventions themselves.
When he isn’t working on refugee economic integration is a tech consultant and product owner in agile software and content development for web and mobile app platforms in the humanitarian learning and information access space.
About the organisation
TERN (www.weartern.org ) in a nutshell (see presentation):
WHAT: A 12-week incubation programme for refugee entrepreneurs, including weekly mentorship, training events, tailored expert advice and access to social business finance (the UK term for microfinance).
HOW: By leveraging the expertise and goodwill and of experienced entrepreneurs and industry experts in Britain to provide a healthy, growth-oriented Entrepreneurial ecosystem for refugee entrepreneurs.
WHY: Because entrepreneurial refugees face barriers to entry but have not only got dreams but also a ton of unrealised potential. We see refugee entrepreneurship and business partnerships between refugees and other citizens as a win-win and as a means for increasing harmony and economic integration.
In terms of UK specific case studies, TERN, its participants, and other refugee entrepreneurs have been featured in these articles:
- From Asylum Seeker To Job Creator: Despite What Populists Think, Refugees Could ‘Make Our Societies Great Again’
- Refugees turned entrepreneurs: ‘I needed to think about the future’
TERN will publish a list of case studies about the refugee businesses supported by its incubator programme when its current programme cohort concludes its mentoring, in 5 weeks’ time.
