Refugee entrepreneurship is transforming communities across the UK, yet refugee founders continue to face significant barriers to funding, networks and business support.
In this Changemaker Interview, I sat down with Fred Kastner, co-founder of TERN, a leading UK social enterprise helping people from refugee backgrounds launch businesses and social ventures.
Fred has spent the last decade challenging assumptions about entrepreneurship, opportunity, and belonging. His work is rooted in a powerful belief: the talent, drive, and solutions already exist within communities. The challenge is creating the conditions for them to flourish.
When Fred Kastner talks about refugees, he doesn’t start with vulnerability or need, he starts with potential.
In this conversation, Fred reflects on the origins of TERN, the emotional realities of building a social enterprise, the lessons he’s learned about burnout, and why – despite the sacrifices – he would do it all again.
Finding Social Enterprise, Music and Love
“I came to the UK because of social enterprise, music and love,” Fred laughs. “And luckily, I found all three.”
Today, TERN works across the UK helping people from refugee backgrounds launch businesses, become self-employed, and create social impact initiatives. The organisation also shares its learning internationally, helping others replicate successful approaches through open-source tools, training, and partnerships.
But the idea for TERN emerged from a much simpler observation.
“At least 20% of adult refugees anywhere in the world are entrepreneurial. They want to create opportunities for themselves, their families and their communities. The potential is already there.”
What often isn’t there are the conditions needed for success: access to networks, finance, customers, and the social capital many entrepreneurs take for granted.
TERN exists to bridge that gap.
The Origin Story Behind TERN
The spark came in 2014 while Fred was working on an innovation project with UNHCR in Uganda.
He was training refugee educators and community leaders in entrepreneurship and discovered himself surrounded by remarkable individuals from Rwanda, Congo, Sudan, Somalia and Ethiopia.
“They were social entrepreneurs before I even had the language for it,” he recalls.
What struck him wasn’t a lack of talent. It was how much talent remained trapped by systems around it.
“I saw people with incredible drive and ideas who could create opportunities for entire communities. But I also saw how much they were being held back.”
When funding priorities shifted and the project was paused, Fred found himself unable to let go of the work. Rather than waiting for permission to continue, he decided to build something himself.
“I realised I had found my spark.”
A Purpose Larger Than a Job Title
When asked to describe his purpose in life, Fred pauses before offering a response that feels both philosophical and deeply practical.
“Facilitating enlightenment through unhindered potential.”
He believes humanity already possesses the knowledge, creativity and motivation needed to solve many of its biggest challenges.
“We have the people. We have the ideas. We have the desire. What we often don’t have are the systems that allow that potential to flourish.”
His role, as he sees it, is not to provide the answers. It is to help remove the obstacles.
Why Fred Chose the Social Enterprise Model
TERN could have been created as a charity. It could have become a traditional business. Instead, Fred chose the social enterprise path.
The reason was less about organisational structure and more about values.
“I wanted to create an environment where I didn’t have to compromise on intent.”
Early in his career, he witnessed organisations struggling with bureaucracy, slow decision-making and, occasionally, values drifting away from practice.
Social enterprise offered a different possibility: the ability to remain agile, experiment, learn and stay focused on impact.
“It’s a vehicle,” he says. “A way of bringing people together around shared intent.”
What Motivates a Social Entrepreneur
Social entrepreneurship is not known for predictable rewards.
Progress can be slow, resources can be limited and the challenges are often relentless. (I can certainly relate to all of the above!)
So what keeps Fred motivated? The answer is surprisingly simple: people.
He lights up when describing entrepreneurs finding their first customers, delivering their first events, or seeing years of effort finally gain traction.
“When people get a real opportunity and show what they’re capable of, that’s where the energy comes from.”
He talks about refugee-led businesses growing audiences, community ventures solving local problems, and entrepreneurs discovering confidence they didn’t know they possessed. These moments may appear small from the outside but for Fred, they are everything.
“When someone tells you they don’t know if their business will succeed, but what they experienced here will stay with them forever, that’s incredibly powerful.”
Burnout, Boundaries and the Importance of Light
Like many founders, Fred learned some of his hardest lessons through exhaustion.
Looking back, he recognises that there were numerous periods of burnout during TERN’s early years – though at the time he lacked the language to describe what he was experiencing.
One warning sign stands out:
“Your relationship to light.”
He explains how easy it became to normalise finishing work after sunset, spending day after day indoors, disconnected from natural rhythms. One evening, cycling to band practice while it was still daylight, he experienced a surprising moment of clarity.
“That 15-minute cycle in the light was transformative. I realised how unusual it had become to leave work while the day was still alive.”
His advice to fellow social entrepreneurs is beautifully simple:
“If you stop seeing the light, it might be a sign you should go home.”
He also urges founders not to ignore physical warning signs—whether anxiety, heart palpitations, panic attacks or other stress responses.
“Don’t be brave about it. Don’t carry it alone. Talk to someone.”
“There Are More Shoulders Now”
One thing that stood out in Fred’s reflection was the sense that TERN has, in every respect, become much bigger than its co-founders.
It wasn’t always that way. In our conversation, Fred recalled a moment six years ago when things were financially tight for TERN and he gave the organisation a loan to cover payroll while waiting for confirmed funding to arrive. Thankfully, the money came through soon after and the loan was repaid quickly. But it was one of those moments that showed how centralised pressure and responsibility was in TERN’s earlier years.
Today, Fred sees a very different organisation. TERN has grown. It has a leadership team of nine, better structures and systems, deeper partnerships, and a bigger team carrying the work together. Its progress is a collective achievement, shaped by staff, partners, funders, volunteers and, most importantly, the real protagonists of TERN’s story: refugee entrepreneurs who are now community and organisation leaders.
As Fred put it: “TERN is ten years old. There are more shoulders now.”
For him, that means TERN no longer needs to be held primarily by its co-founders. It now has a shared mission, it is co-owned by many, and it is stronger because of it.
Knowing You’re on the Right Path
Today, after ten years of leading TERN, Fred speaks with a sense of calm that wasn’t always present in the early years. For him, success is no longer measured solely through growth or achievements, it is about integrity, learning and becoming more comfortable with imperfection.
“Inner peace comes from not attaching your identity to a single result.”
The strongest signal that he is on the right path comes when others take something TERN has created and build on it, when ideas spread, when people carry them forward.
“When somebody picks up something you’ve shared and turns it into something new, that’s true bliss.”
Then he offers perhaps the most memorable insight of our conversation:
“Something has reached a level of craft when it’s worth passing on because it creates value in other hands.”
Advice for Aspiring Changemakers
For those still searching for their purpose, Fred recommends curiosity over certainty.
He encourages changemakers to read, to volunteer to spend time with different communities and to stay close to the issues that move you.
“Expose yourself to different contexts, people and experiences.”
Purpose, he believes, emerges through many small moments of connection. His own calling grew from years of conversations, friendships, reading and exposure to communities whose experiences challenged his worldview.
The more we engage with the world around us, the more likely we are to recognise where we are being invited to contribute.
Rapid Fire
What motivates you every day?
Tinkering.
What book has influenced you most?
Reinventing Organizations by Frederic Laloux.
What habit keeps you grounded?
Moral self-examination.
What myth about social entrepreneurship would you challenge?
“That success is attached to perpetuity.”
Learn More
To learn more about Fred Kastner and TERN’s work supporting refugee entrepreneurs, visit TERN’s LinkedIn page or connect directly with Fred on LinkedIn.
As Fred reminds us, creating meaningful change doesn’t always require having all the answers. Sometimes it starts with recognising that the answers already exist and dedicating ourselves to removing the barriers that stop people from realising them.
