Former refugee Hormoz Ahmadzadeh writes about where we're at right now after ten years of Result CIC.

Right now, there’s an alignment of aspects of my life that come together to make June 2022 really stand out.



For a start, Result CIC is 10 years old this month. That’s quite a remarkable achievement, made even greater in that we’ve thrived over the last decade to be able to support so many different people and organisations to develop, both personally and professionally. If I think back to our beginnings when I set up Result CIC with our Director Emeritus Andy Hilton, I’m so proud of where we are now with Jane Cordell as co-director and of the wonderful colleagues and clients we get to work with.



We started our first project in 2015 with the local organisation Greater Manchester Immigration Aid Unit (GMIAU) doing excellent work in representing asylum seekers. Our partnership with GMIAU with funding from Awards for All gave us a reminder of the often unrecognised and misrepresented ingenuity of people in society by the press. More of that later.


June is also the month in which we celebrate Refugee Week, although ‘celebrate’ feels like a curious word in the current climate. Why? Well, there’s much to be hopeful about when the rise in the number of people willing to take in refugees in the UK has rocketed since the Ukraine crisis. Indeed, households are being offered monthly payments to take in Ukrainian refugees. Meanwhile, our country seeks to fly non-Ukrainian migrants to Rwanda. One set of people supported with flights, financial support, the welcome of a nation. The other, unsupported people largely from the likes of Afghanistan or Syria, forced into dangerous journeys, declared ‘illegal’ and thrown out. Unwelcome, discarded, and dehumanised.



The difference feels pretty black and white.



I’m a former refugee. There’s a sense that my life has come full circle when, in our tenth year, Result CIC has embarked on a three-year project, Ideas Into Action, supporting refugee entrepreneurs to develop their own businesses, create new opportunities and growth within the society they are now part of. I recognise these people, their journeys, their lived experience, because many aspects of it are also mine.



Ideas into Action is a partnership between us, TERN (The Entrepreneurial Refugee Network) and Social Enterprise UK (SEUK).

By the end of the project, sixty people from a refugee background will have been supported towards the creation of businesses which will contribute to society in ways which are impossible to measure. 



Kindness, generosity, understanding, these are all qualities that support refugees to become part of a community, to contribute, to integrate, to put back in.



So one way to celebrate Refugee Week is to support our incredibly resilient Ideas Into Action entrepreneurs as they start to crowdfund their ambitious plans. From using art to heal trauma, to childcare initiatives, you can do more than celebrate refugees. 



You can discover more about these projects and show your support here: www.crowdfunder.co.uk/programmes/tern