RISE-ing to new heights

This research examines a part of the SOAR Initiative, a holistic model for small business development specifically tailored to individuals belonging to underserved communities. The specific program that it is focused on is the RISE program. Refugee and Immigrant Success through Entrepreneurship (RISE) program is focused on training, mentoring, and providing access to networking opportunities for aspiring entrepreneurs from refugee and immigrant backgrounds. The program aims to facilitate the transformation of individuals, families, and local economies to enable them to move from a survival-focused lifestyle to thriving at all levels.

This research will highlight the practical and research best practices, opportunities, and challenges of establishing, evaluating, and sustaining an incubator-style program based on experiences and research findings from the first cohort of refugees participating. The research will contextualize how entrepreneurship”“ along with other alternative career pathways ““ offers a unique opportunity and an important alternative model for workforce development for this group to address income and social inequality for refugees resettled to the United States. Moreover, entrepreneurial investment in refugees and immigrants, such as through incubator models, offers a unique means of expanding both individual integration pathways and the visibility of opportunities for immigrant communities.

Hello everyone my name is Ayman Habib and I’m a sophomore majoring in Global Affairs. I have had the privilege of working as a research assistant at the IIR, the Institute for immigration research this school year, and today I will be going over the research that I’m working on. The research is called RISE-ing to new heights and it examines the Rise program initiated by the Costello College of Business. A little bit more about the Rise program it is focused on training mentoring and providing access to networking opportunities for aspiring entrepreneurs from refugee and immigrant backgrounds. You can learn more about the initiative by visiting the website on this slide. When it comes to the research aspect of things there were several research questions that we had to refine. In the end, I ended up focusing on the question that was bolded on the slide: “How do refugees come to be involved in entrepreneurship following resettlement in the United States.” As for the literature review, there was a clear gap in the research on Refugee entrepreneurship and resettlement contexts. Some of the studies were on immigrant entrepreneurship but I still chose to review them since there’s a lot of parallels with immigrant and refugee entrepreneurship. Some of the studies shed light on the challenges faced by refugee entrepreneurs and other studies focused on the integration aspect of refugee entrepreneurship and how it can facilitate the process.

As mentioned earlier Duncan was one of the studies that focused on challenges. This slide details the challenges of starting a new business for refugees. Khademi et. al divided integration and concluded that entrepreneurship can help the integration of refugees in several ways such as increased awareness of the host country, improved language proficiency, and the expansion of social capital, and more. The methodology that I used for this research is divided into three parts. I started off with the administrative data analysis and the next step was the interviews. These include both entrepreneurs and mentors. These interviews will be semi-structured and will include questions about the subject’s entrepreneurial motivations the last data collection is from Qualtrics surveys. These will entail a baseline and a follow-up survey for both the mentors and the entrepreneurs. The interview questions were divided into five sections. The first one was entrepreneurial motivation where questions about their background education and interests were asked. The second section is questioning them about their entrepreneurial experiences and the challenges that they have faced. The third section is about the impact of their social networks on their business and this section also goes into mentorship. The fourth one is taking a deeper look into the details of their business and the last one evaluates the Rise program that they participated in. The next steps of the research are starting the interview phase once the IRB gets reapproved with the edits that we have made and secondly working on the grants for the project. Then sending out surveys. Then analyzing data and drafting research with the findings and finally publishing the research. Thank you for listening and if you have any questions please feel free to contact me.