Tent Partnership for Refugees: Refugee Hiring and Mentorship Support Across 11 Countries

Correction notice: an earlier version of this page described a “Global Refugee Entrepreneurship Network” seed fund awarding up to 150,000 USD per refugee-led enterprise, with a July 2025 deadline. No such fund exists. Tent’s own website does not mention grants, seed capital, or business financing anywhere, and no organisation called the Global Refugee Entrepreneurship Network appears on it. The page has been rewritten around what Tent actually provides. If you arrived here looking for cash for a refugee-owned business, read the section on where refugee business capital really comes from — but do not expect it from Tent.

What Tent Actually Is

The Tent Partnership for Refugees is an employer coalition, not a funder. Its homepage states plainly that “Tent works with over 500 of the world’s largest employers to help refugees get jobs,” and describes itself as “the only organization mobilizing and supporting leading businesses across multiple countries to hire refugees at scale.”

The money in Tent’s model flows the other way from what a grant page would imply. Companies join Tent — free of charge — and then commit their own hiring capacity, their employees’ time as mentors, or financial and pro bono support to Tent itself. Refugees receive jobs, mentorship, and introductions. They do not receive cheques from Tent.

That distinction matters if you are budgeting a business plan. A Tent connection can be worth a great deal, but it is worth it in the form of employment, professional networks, and in some cases corporate customers — not working capital.

At a Glance

The Three Things Tent Does

Tent’s site organises its work into exactly three streams, and nothing on the site sits outside them.

Hiring. Companies directly employ refugees; staffing agencies fill client roles with refugee talent. Tent’s role is advisory and connective — it “advises member companies on how they can build effective refugee hiring programs and integrate refugees into their workforces,” then connects those companies with local resettlement agencies, staffing agencies, and nonprofits that can source candidates. Tent does not post job listings for refugees to apply to directly.

Mentoring. Employees at member companies are paired with refugee mentees for professional development — career strategy, CV and cover letter work, interview practice, and network building.

High-impact partnerships. Companies give Tent financial support or pro bono expertise. This is corporate philanthropy directed at Tent’s operations, not a fund that redistributes to refugees.

Membership carries no hiring quota. Tent’s FAQ is also explicit that it advises members “to hire only refugees with legal work authorization,” so work authorisation in your host country is a threshold condition for everything downstream.

Mentorship: The Part You Can Actually Sign Up For

Mentorship is the only Tent programme an individual refugee participates in directly, and it is free for mentees. Three initiatives run at present.

Refugee Mentorship – U.S. The broadest of the three. Eligibility is stated on Tent’s page as “all forcibly displaced individuals living in the U.S. with a legal immigration status, as well as U.S. citizens, who are 18 years old or older.” More than 50 major employers supply mentors, among them Accenture, Google, Microsoft, JPMorgan Chase, Amazon, Cisco, Hilton, and Starbucks.

Refugee Women Mentorship – Europe. Co-hosted with Catalyst, running across France, Germany, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain, Sweden, and the UK. It supports refugee women, including Ukrainian refugee women. Over 25 organisations participate, including Accenture, Adidas, American Express, Barilla, Bloomberg, BNP Paribas, Coca-Cola, EY, Hilton, L’Oréal, Pfizer, and Randstad.

LGBTQ Refugee Mentorship – Canada. Run in partnership with the Human Rights Campaign, with 16 participating organisations including Accenture, ADP, BMO, CIBC, Citi, Endeavor, Finastra, HSBC, IBM, Ipsos, Jacobs, Kearney, Pfizer, Scotiabank, Softchoice, and Sun Life. Companies mobilise employees through their LGBTQ employee resource groups.

Tent does not publish cohort dates, session counts, or programme lengths for any of the three. Do not plan around an assumed schedule.

How a Refugee Actually Gets In

There is no public self-enrolment form for mentees on tent.org. The documented route runs through Tent’s NGO partners: an NGO completes Tent’s NGO interest form, Tent follows up, and the NGO then refers its refugee clients into the mentorship initiative.

Practically, that means your first move is not to email Tent. It is to ask the resettlement agency, refugee services nonprofit, or employment-support charity you already work with whether they are among Tent’s 900+ local partners, and if not, to send them the link so they can register. Caseworkers at established resettlement agencies in the eleven Tent countries are the people most likely to be able to put your name forward.

If you have no NGO relationship yet, build one first. That connection is also the route to most of the other services displaced people need — credential recognition, language support, and legal advice on work authorisation.

For Refugee Entrepreneurs: What Tent Can and Cannot Reach

Tent’s model is employment inside existing companies. If you are running your own business, the fit is indirect.

Tent’s site maintains a page tagging member companies that have made commitments related to entrepreneurship. As of this check, the companies listed there are eBay, Etsy, BBVA, Bancamía, DoorDash, Virgin, ENGIE, Shopify, Wix, and the Bogotá Chamber of Commerce. Tent’s individual member profiles no longer publish the specifics of each commitment, and a former “Supporting Entrepreneurship” page on the site now returns a 404. Treat that list as a set of leads to research with each company directly — several of them run microfinance arms, seller platforms, or marketplace onboarding programmes that a refugee-owned business can approach on its own terms — rather than as a menu Tent administers.

One concrete initiative is on the record. In a press release dated 13 October 2022, Tent, the Canadian Aboriginal and Minority Supplier Council (CAMSC), and TD announced a supplier-diversity certification for refugee entrepreneurs in Canada. Eligibility as announced: a for-profit business operating in Canada, 51% owned, managed, and controlled by an entrepreneur who arrived in Canada as a refugee, and established within 10 years of that arrival. Certification was to open access to CAMSC’s database of over 150 corporate and government members that collectively spend more than $1 billion annually on procurement, plus mentorship, training, and workshops on proposal writing and contract negotiation. TD committed to covering certification fees for qualified applicants for the programme’s first three years.

Two cautions on that one. The three-year fee sponsorship as announced would have run out, and CAMSC’s dedicated landing page for the refugee certification no longer resolves. Contact CAMSC directly before assuming the programme is open or free.

Where Refugee Business Capital Actually Comes From

Since the original version of this page sent people looking for a nonexistent six-figure grant, here is the honest replacement guidance. Capital for refugee-owned businesses tends to arrive in far smaller amounts and from four kinds of sources:

• Microfinance institutions and refugee-lending banks operating in your host country, which underwrite on cash flow rather than collateral or credit history.
• Community-based organisations that receive government workforce or microenterprise funding and pass it through as small grants, equipment, or technical assistance.
• Supplier-diversity certification bodies, which do not give cash but open procurement doors — often worth more than a one-off grant.
• Corporate platform programmes run by marketplaces and payment companies, typically offering fee relief, marketing support, or modest cash prizes rather than growth capital.

Whatever you find, verify the award size, eligibility, and deadline on the operating organisation’s own website before you spend time on an application. Aggregator sites recycle stale and sometimes fabricated figures — which is exactly how this page came to advertise 150,000 USD that no one was offering.

For Employers

If you run or influence hiring at a company, Tent’s proposition is straightforward. Membership is free and carries no quota. Members get advisory support from Tent’s in-country teams, tailored HR training, introductions to local recruitment partners, and a Members’ Hub with more than 200 resources. Tent publishes country-specific employer guides — an Employers’ Guide to Hiring Refugees in Sweden was released on 9 July 2026.

The scale is real where coalitions have matured. On 22 July 2026, Tent Nederland told the Dutch outlet NU.nl that companies in its Netherlands coalition have hired more than 13,500 refugees, with the coalition growing to 51 participating employers. Tent has also been named to the fourth annual TIME100 Most Influential Companies list.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does Tent give money to refugees or refugee-owned businesses? No. Nothing on tent.org describes grants, loans, seed funding, or cash awards of any kind.

Was there ever a 150,000 USD Tent seed fund? Not on any Tent source. The figure, the “Global Refugee Entrepreneurship Network,” and the 5 July 2025 deadline previously listed here could not be traced to Tent or to any other operator.

Can I apply to Tent for a job? Not directly. Tent connects member companies to local recruitment partners; you reach those roles through resettlement agencies, staffing agencies, and nonprofits in your area.

Is there a deadline? None is published. Company membership and NGO partnership enquiries are open continuously, and mentorship cohorts are filled through NGO referrals rather than a public application window.

Do I need work authorisation? For hiring, yes — Tent advises members to hire only refugees with legal work authorisation. The U.S. mentorship programme likewise requires legal immigration status or citizenship, plus age 18 or older.

I am outside the 11 countries. Can I take part? Tent’s staffed operations cover Canada, Colombia, Mexico, the U.S., France, Germany, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain, Sweden, and the UK. Outside those, there is no local Tent team to route you to member employers.

Get Started

Check the details yourself before acting on anything written here:

Official site: https://www.tent.org/

Refugees and displaced jobseekers: contact a local resettlement or refugee-services organisation and ask whether they are a Tent NGO partner. That referral is the working route into mentorship.

Employers: use the “Join Tent” form on the site. Membership costs nothing and does not obligate you to a hiring target.

Refugee business owners: Tent is a route to employers, mentors, and possibly corporate customers. For capital, look to microfinance lenders and community organisations in your host country, and confirm every figure on the funder’s own site.