An entrepreneurial hub on the coast of southern Spain houses more than 600 global companies in shiny, modern buildings, with rows of palm trees reflected in walls of windows. The Andalusia Technology Park, or Parque Tecnológico de Andalucía (PTA), is a bit like the country’s version of Silicon Valley. It includes tech startups, multinational companies like Oracle and Accenture … and a 90-year-old US-based missions agency called Christar.
Christar’s international team left its Dallas-area headquarters two years ago for this tech park in Málaga, Spain, eager for the chance to engage social innovation opportunities alongside the public sector. But God had another mission in store for them.
“It’s the best time zone in the world to connect with the rest of the world, there’s a good international airport, and the cost of doing business is no more than doing it in Richardson, Texas,” said Brent McHugh, who became the team’s director in 2013 and oversaw the move to Málaga.
The popular tech park’s business and innovation center was also looking for ways to develop social corporate responsibility, so McHugh hoped to partner with their tech-minded global neighbors—most of whom had no other exposure to evangelicals.
But just as Christar was getting settled, the refugee crisis was in full swing, with thousands of migrants pouring into Europe from the Middle East and Africa. While the continent initially welcomed these newcomers, within months key ports of entry began shutting down. By 2018, the new country of choice was Spain, coming straight through Málaga.
“I pulled back from day-to-day refugee ministry—then God decided to provide refugees right to our doorstep,” said McHugh, who spent a decade working with refugees in Turkey. “God wastes nothing.”
Though numbers are slightly down compared to last year, more than 7,000 people—about 40 percent of all who have entered Europe in 2019—have landed in the Andalusian city of half a million people.
“Honestly, it’s overwhelming. The numbers skyrocketed overnight. The closing of Italy was not predicted,” said one Christar employee, who asked not to be identified for security reasons. “Spain is trying to get their hands around it. It’s a lot of people. Their system wasn’t set up for it. They weren’t ready.”
But in many ways Christar was. The ministry’s efforts to serve and reach people from Muslim, Hindu, and Buddhist backgrounds dates back more than a century—much of that time under the name International Missions Inc.—and its workers had the cross-cultural savvy and desire to help the asylum seekers who stuck around the Spanish port city and tech hub. (Two of the organization’s current initiatives include working with Middle Eastern refugees in the US and church planting in Turkey.)
While Spain’s unemployment rate has dropped significantly in recent years—it hit 27 percent in 2013—it’s still at 15 percent for the country of 50 million people. (In contrast, the US unemployment sits at 3.6 percent.) But for immigrants in Andalucía, unemployment is 64 percent.
Spaniards fear that the influx of migrants will take away their jobs, Christar staff noticed. They’re also more likely to hire fellow Spaniards before foreigners. While other groups stepped up to offer Spanish classes or computer training for the unemployed migrants, Christar successfully pitched the European Union a program to train migrants to start their own businesses.
“Rather than a job training for jobs that don’t exist, we believe in helping immigrants and refugees start their own microenterprises, or local, regional, and global companies,” said McHugh.
Last year, the ministry launched a prototype of the program with about a dozen refugees who went through their curriculum and created business models. Seven of the refugees finished the program, and BIC Euronova and Microbank Spain selected three of the projects for potential funding. Few Christian NGOs offer programs specifically focused on refugees and entrepreneurship. Currently, World Vision is piloting microfinance programs to Sudanese refugees in Uganda and internally displaced Rohingya in Myanmar through a program called Vision Fund.
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Source: Christianity Today
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