I will be going to Kakuma Refugee camp in northern Kenya next week with my friend and colleague Henrik Scheel and his company StartupExperience to teach a two-day Bootcamp on entrepreneurship.
The program is a collaboration with World Economic Forum Young Global Leaders, Danish Church Aid, iamtheCODE, and Oxford University.
It’s very humbling to be in such good company and have the opportunity to be a part of something like this.
It is our collective hope that this type of entrepreneurship education can empower the 2.9 million people in refugee camps worldwide.
I have to give special credit to Henrik for having this vision in the first place and putting in the effort to work through all of the logistical challenges to make it happen.
I plan to write a few pieces about my observations during my 5 days stay in the camp and wanted to share one thing beforehand that was very energizing and interesting to me.
There is a lot more entrepreneurship taking place in these camps than I had imagined.
We received over 150 applications for only 30 spots in our program.
As a part of their application process, refugee entrepreneurs had to describe their current business, revenue, and many other business details.
While I wish it were possible to work with everyone, the process of evaluating the applications was fascinating to me.
I suppose I had no idea what type of businesses would exist and thrive in a refugee camp so reading about these entrepreneurs was super informative for me.
More importantly, it was an inspiring reminder that people are resilient and have the ability to thrive under any conditions.
Here is a quick snapshot of some of the businesses that I read about in the process.
