When considering redemptive entrepreneurship, I wanted to consider companies that are having a genuine impact across the world. One company I found doing this is called Every Shelter. Based on their understanding of the basic need of humans for shelter, a pair of architects created a company focused on providing shelter for refugees around the world.
Their first design was Emergency Floor, a design that allows refugees to quickly receive insulated flooring. From this basic product, they built a company based on providing a “refugee-aid ecosystem” that is focused on providing lasting and meaningful help to people who have been displaced around the world, based on providing stability, agency, and opportunity.
I was specifically drawn to this company since they aided in refugee relief after the earthquakes that affected Turkey and Syria. The main region that was affected in Turkey was the region which I spent 2 months doing mission work in prior to the earthquakes. When the earthquakes hit Turkey many people that I had grown to know and pray for regularly were displaced from their homes and some that I knew lost their lives in the earthquakes. During a crisis, many organizations will provide immediate help for displaced families, but many don’t consider the lasting well-being of those refugees. Organizations like Every Shelter seek not only to attend to the physical needs of refugees in concrete ways, but also seek to help refugees get shelter, find new jobs after crises, and enter into the economy of whatever country they are being hosted in.
When reflecting on Every Shelter, I was reminded of God’s command to care for the sojourner. In almost every culture I have observed, refugees are often the most overlooked or even looked-down-on people group. However, God’s command concerning refugees is this, “When a stranger resides with you in your land, you shall not do him wrong. The stranger who resides with you shall be to you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt; I am the Lord your God” (Leviticus 19:33-34).
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