Bid to let those less fortunate try their hand at enterprise - The National

Academic dropouts, social welfare recipients and former prison inmates are among a pool of underserved UAE nationals who are being groomed to become budding entrepreneurs and small-business owners.

The Khalifa Fund for Enterprise Development, which has provided almost US$650 million (Dh176.9m) in financial support since it launched five years ago, has been testing various "social entrepreneurship" programmes.

These have already been used to train more than 380 residents of Abu Dhabi to tackle entrepreneurial activities and are now rolling out or being considered for expansion across all of the emirates.

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