At SHIFT Business Festival, participants have two whole days to discuss, learn and come together in new ways. That’s why SHIFT has sought to partner with businesses and organisations that are open-minded and unafraid of change.
Startup Refugees is a life-changing social innovation founded in Finland: Startup Refugees harnesses the human capital of refugees, combines it with local entrepreneurship and creates new opportunities and more jobs for everyone.
Startup Refugees’ angle for SHIFT arises from the idea of "Redefining integration". Riku Rantala and Tunna Milonoff, of Madventures fame, founded the Startup Refugees volunteer network in 2015 in response to the needs of the refugees arriving in Finland at that time. Startup Refugees consists of businesses of different sizes, public sector organisations, communities and individuals, who share a common goal: to support employment and entrepreneurship of people who have recently immigrated to Finland. In two and a half years, the network has grown into a scalable social innovation that challenges conventional ideas about employment, integration and learning.
Startup Refugees’ operations are based on mapping the skills profiles of people arriving in Finland. This information is then analysed to channel the network’s resources to where they are needed. Businesses contribute to the network in many ways and in accordance with their own strategies, as is also seen at SHIFT. For example, network member Futurice has produced the Match Made in Startup Refugees tool, which facilitates immigrant employment by automatically generating CVs and searching for people with skills in a particular field to match employers’ needs. At Startup Refugees’ stand at SHIFT, Just Fix It fixes mobile phones on the fly, and other teams of the entrepreneurship program are also present, all seeking employment in their new home country with the network’s help.
Startup Refugees expanded its operations to Turku at the beginning of March, when Kimmo Laine was appointed area chief. Startup Refugees in Turku has so far organised three tailored recruiting events and one skills mapping event open for all refugees and immigrants. The recruiting events have been organised to meet the needs of an employer partner, and through them, over 20 people, many of them refugees, have found employment.
Kimmo Laine
Chief – Western Finland
Startup Refugees
+358 44 974 0420
Mari Männistö
Head of Marketing & Communications
SHIFT Business Festival
+358 45 8684 808
SHIFT Business Festival connects groundbreaking technology with leaders of traditional industries for a discussion about the ethics of future development. The festival, attracting 4000 great minds and visionaries, is held May 22nd - 23rd 2018 in the abandoned prison of Kakolan Lääni, Turku, Finland.
SHIFT is organised by a non-profit organization with the purpose of shaping breakthrough technology to be responsible and sustainable.
SHIFT is not an event. It is a beginning.
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