5th Summit, 2022

The 5th annual summit marked the return to in-person events by convening 100 attendees from 19 countries in The Human Safety Net's stunning new home on St Mark's Square, Venice.

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4th Summit, 2021

The 4th annual summit was hosted online while Covid continued to limit international travel. We maintained the successful format trailed in 2020, with members dialling into sessions spread over a five-day period. The summit featured a keynote from Prof Alexander Betts of Oxford University, fringe events organised by Jusoor, SPARK and Mig.En.Cube, and an inaugural Leaders Forum for director-level leaders of refugee entrepreneurship programmes, The refugee entrepreneurs showcase first trialled in 2020 was repeated, this time with $8,000 of cash prizes shared among the 8 refugee entrepreneurs.

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3rd Summit, 2020

The 3rd annual summit was hosted online at the height of the global pandemic. To maintain a format where all attendees could engage as one group we spread the summit over a five-day period. Plenary sessions ran for 2.5 hours a day at an optimal time to allow members around the world to dial in. The summit featured double the content of previous events including four member-led workshops. It also featured a highly successful global refugee entrepreneur pitching session where 10 entrepreneurs from five countries presented their businesses to the community.

2nd Summit, 2019

From 31st October to 1st November, the Centre for Entrepreneurs, supported by NatWest, hosted the 2nd annual Global Refugee Entrepreneurship Summit. Following the successful inaugural summit last November with 80 attendees from 20 countries, this year the Centre convened 140 people for two action-packed days of knowledge exchange, networking and collaboration. The summit brought together members of the Refugee Entrepreneurship Network, practitioners running refugee entrepreneurship programmes, philanthropists, international organisations, researchers, including: Catalysr (Australia), SSI, Migraflix (Brazil), Settlement Services International (Australia), NyföretagarCentrum (Sweden), BCNA, Business Center for New Americans (USA), IDEMA (Turkey), Ana and Vlade Divac Foundation (Serbia), Kiva (USA), Refugee Investment Network (USA), FAIRE (France), University of Loughborough (UK), The Asfari Foundation (UK).

Inaugural Summit, 2018

November 2018 saw the inaugural Global Refugee Entrepreneurship Summit, co-hosted by the Government Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy in London. More than 80 practitioners from 20 countries came together for a day of knowledge-exchange, action and networking. In workgroups of ten, participants spent most of the day designing their own solutions for the sector’s challenges. Attendees comprised of philanthropists, investors, researchers, entrepreneurs, and of course refugee entrepreneurship programmes, including: The Entrepreneurial Refugee Network (UK), SINGA Business Lab (Germany), DELITE LABS (Netherlands), African Entrepreneur Collective (Rwanda), Startups Without Borders (Egypt), 51 Labs (Iraq), the Turkish Entrepreneurship Foundation, Ygap (Australia) and the Entrepreneurship Support Program for Refugee Empowerment (Japan).