25 Million Sparks: The Untold Story of Refugee Entrepreneurs

Refugees are “the most extreme entrepreneurs on the planet,” according to this uplifting survey from Hanna, the founder of the social enterprise business DreamxAmerica. As evidence, the author follows three Syrian innovators in Jordan’s Za’atari refugee camp: there’s Asma, the founder of a children’s storytelling initiative; Yasmina, the owner of a wedding dress shop and salon; and Malak, whose provocative art challenges the stereotype of refugees as being “merely victims.” Throughout, Hanna stresses that one-dimensional portrayals dehumanize refugees and overlook that they are “a valuable source of innovation and economic growth.” Refugees, he argues, are in fact uniquely suited to entrepreneurship: Malak, for example, found “art was her refuge” in her early days at the camp and “like many entrepreneurs... had to be scrappy about the way she improved her skills,” while “during the worst period of Asma’s life,” she found “a renewed sense of potential in miserable Za’atari” and began teaching. Hanna periodically zooms out to capture the wider refugee entrepreneurial movement, and he closes with concrete ways to support it, including investing in refugees’ businesses and donating to local immigrant welcoming centers. Readers will gain a new appreciation of a community that’s, as Hanna writes, “turning unimaginable pain into beautiful reinvention.” (May)