Anqa Collective: Shop products & experiences from refugee-led businesses.
The marketplace for refugee businesses, selling exciting products and experiences.
WORDS FROM ANQA COLLECTIVE
Anqa is a marketplace for refugee-led businesses, selling products and experiences from a new generation of refugee entrepreneurs. Our story started in 2020: Anqa is an offshoot of TERN, a social enterprise set up in 2016 to provide business support to refugee entrepreneurs, including help accessing and building a network of customers. We held a pop up shop in 2019 with entrepreneurs from the TERN community and we were blown away with the interest and positive feedback we received. We launched Anqa in July 2020 to connect refugee founders to these new customers and now we offer everything from Nigerian chilli sauce and FairTrade coffee to handmade lingerie and beauty services! The impact of supporting small businesses becomes even greater with a refugee-led enterprise. Studies have shown that disadvantages in the labour market and in terms of social and financial well-being persist for refugees for a significant length of time after their arrival here, and the more visibility we give to their achievements and the more we create platforms for them to share their own ideas, the more we can change negative narratives around forced migration. Shopping from Anqa is about connecting with the person behind the product as well as actually buying the thing. When a seller joins us, an important part of the process is working with the entrepreneur to create their profile page, which is where they can choose how to tell their story as both a founder and a refugee. Anqa is as much about storytelling as it is sales, and we hope you enjoy reading more about these amazing individuals. Anqa is currently a small community of entrepreneurs who love supporting each other, and when someone gets their first order they share the news in our WhatsApp group and we all celebrate together!