“Living and working in Britain had always been my dream” explains Paulett, a highly qualified and passionate teacher, with two degrees in International Politics and Spanish. Paulett continues “in Jamaica migration to the Mother Country (Britain) was considered the key to our survival. After World War Two, the UK needed…

Hello I’m Jess Thompson, the Founder of Migrateful. Migrateful runs cookery classes in London and Bristol led by refugee chefs struggling to integrate and access employment due to legal and linguistic barriers. As a type one diabetic, I am subject to an annual eye scan. This summer, the results came…

With 2500 years of saffron and rosewater scented history, Iranian cuisine has influenced cooking all over the globe — earning its reputation as the ‘mother cuisine’. Those who have attended Elahe and Parastoo’s cookery classes have reported them to be a “delicious, touching and magical experience”. …

Nigerian chef Elizabeth left behind a successful career in Nigeria to come to the UK to be with her sisters after her mother died. She found herself waiting for 8 years as an illegal immigrant unable to work or receive benefits — “My name is Elizabeth and I am from Nigeria. I was lucky enough to be brought up in a middle class family who valued education. After graduating from my Psychology Master’s I got a well-paid job working for a newspaper. They called me “press woman”. I got to meet with…

Majeda was imprisoned by the Syrian government for helping to feed people whose homes had been bombed in the war. She managed to escape Syria and now uses food to continue her activism in exile. — I first met Majeda a few weeks after she had arrived in the UK in 2017. She had been working as a children’s therapist when the war broke out in Syria in 2011. She and her family had lived a happy and privileged life in a big house in Damascus…

Some anthropologists say that sharing food is what makes us human. There’s nothing else we do that is so central to making us feel part of a group. Sharing food is an opportunity to physically support each other and to share companionship through mealtime conversation. A companion, deriving from the…

As part of the Year Here Fellowship, our team was asked to carry out a two-month consultancy project in the Meadows Estate, one of the most deprived estates in the UK. Home to 1755 residents, the estate is located in the borough of Hounslow, famed for its appearance in the…

I want to live in a society where the likes of Jolanta, Claudia, Leonor, Ahmad and Noor can feel fully integrated members of our community. This is what inspired me to start the Beyond English Club which became a form of group therapy for everyone, myself included. For example, we…

I recently finished a six month placement at the Bromley-by-Bow community centre, located in Tower Hamlets, one of the poorest and most ethnically diverse boroughs in London. 43% of residents are born outside of the UK and come from over 200 different countries. My desk was placed in the English…