Project Phoenix

Project Phoenix provides community-generated seed loans and mentoring services to refugee-entrepreneurs living in European cities.

Project Phoenix empowers refugees in European cities through providing small, community-generated seed loans to support entrepreneurial and self-sustaining initiatives. Project Phoenix will: - Identify promising, sustainable business projects/plans initiated and run by refugees - Create and manage a crowdfunding platform and - Financially support refugee-entrepreneurs in their project; - Accelerate their integration into their new environment and allow them to demonstrate they can be valuable contributing members of society; and - Involve the wider community by allowing them to invest into these projects rather than considering it charity. To do this, we use an incubator approach in which we work physically closely together with the beneficiaries and with existing local startup incubators, social services, legal support and local government to provide financial support as well as wrap-around assistance and support that is required to launch and follow-through on a successful new project. Loans are provided through community-generated funding, where every supporter who invests in the beneficiary's project can expect to get a return of their investment within a specified period of time.