Apax Foundation renews its commitment to TERN – The Entrepreneurial Refugee Network
16th May 2023
Apax TERN’s mission is to enable refugees to thrive through the power of their own ideas. They achieve this through building and growing refugee start-up ecosystemsTERN’s mission is to enable refugees to thrive through the power of their own ideas. They achieve this through building and growing refugee start-up ecosystems and marketplaces tailored to the needs of refugee entrepreneurs. The Apax Foundation has a particular interest in organisations that help refugees achieve financial stability and build fulfilling lives; TERN’s focus on developing the entrepreneurial spirit of skilled people resonates strongly with Apax’s DNA.
TERN provides entrepreneurship support services through three interlocking programmes:
1) UP Collective: a pre-incubator that combines part-time employment with early business idea exploration and validation
2) TERN TakeOff: industry incubation programmes combining co-working and business mentorship to enable sustainable business launches
3) TERN On Demand: acceleration and growth consulting focused on one-to-one targeted problem solving for trading businesses.
In addition, TERN offers free services such as marketing, brand and website building services; legal support; access to finance (micro loans and angel finance); and access to customers through Europe’s only marketplace for refugee-led brands, Anqa.
TERN has more than quadrupled its income and client base since its inception in 2017, now supporting a community of more than 360 refugee entrepreneurs in the UK. The Apax Foundation has supported TERN since its inception and recommitted to the organisation for a further 2 years in February 2023. The Apax Foundation’s funding will be used to help strengthen TERN’s trainer package and grow its marketplace.
The Apax team is also excited to be partnering with TERN on an ‘Apax Gives Back’ community service day in July this year, contributing to TERN’s ‘Test My Idea: Refugee Entrepreneur Business Support’ event. This is part of TERN's pre-incubation programme supporting entrepreneurial refugees to explore and test their business ideas. The event gives entrepreneurs a platform to showcase their prototypes and receive feedback to help them improve their business ideas before taking them to market.
For more information, please go to https://wearetern.org/
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The Apax Foundation is the channel for Apax’s charitable giving worldwide. It focuses on social mobility in under-served communities and has developed active partnerships with charities in countries where our team are based. The Apax Foundation aims to make a meaningful difference in the communities where we work and live, and supports firm-wide volunteering initiatives as well as the personal philanthropic activities of the Apax team globally.