Our Mission: Preventing a Lost Generation

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Refugees are ordinary people living in extraordinary circumstances. The majority of refugees worldwide are stuck in limbo with limited economic or educational opportunities. They are consumers, producers, buyers, sellers, employers, and entrepreneurs. They have talent and limitless potential.

Except that is not how they are viewed. Refugees are often only seen for their vulnerabilities. Supports rarely match what they are capable of achieving. Instead, vocation and skills training programs are created in arbitrarily selected areas from beekeeping to tailoring. Programs with little market value or transferable skills. 

Founded in 2016, Hello Future is a nonprofit organization that bridges the education gap for adolescent refugees. We transform the refugee youth experience from forgotten, alone, and stuck to connected and empowered so they can thrive anywhere. We accomplish this by teaching the essential skills needed to become entrepreneurs and community leaders.

We asked ourselves, what are the essential skills refugee youth need in order to become successful, contributing members of their communities? How can we supplement a limited and traditional high school education to ensure that they had a sense of purpose and a pathway to a livelihood that avoids the traps of radicalization and early marriage? 

We start with digital literacy and basic digital skills. From there, we introduce storytelling, media literacy, critical thinking, and problem-solving, while scaffolding leadership skills, financial literacy, and entrepreneurship into the youths’ learning. Spread across four foundation courses, our program culminates in a Small Business Incubator for Refugees. 

Hello Future is creating a new path forward, a new model that starts with education and leads to self-reliance.