Introducing the Refugee Social Enterprise project
And the winner is…
At the end of last year, the British Red Cross ran its first Ideas Challenge open to all members of staff across the UK. The original challenge asked people to submit ideas on how we might make or save money as an organisation. The prize was for the Innovation team to dedicate three months to research, prototype and pilot the winner’s idea. Of the 189 ideas received, there were two joint winners: the Great British Penny Hunt and the Refugee Social Enterprise project. This blog post will focus on the first steps of the Refugee Social Enterprise project.
…the Syrian Dinner Project
Jonathan Brown, our Refugee Services manager in North and West Wales put forward the idea of a pop-up refugee café. The idea was based on the success of a social enterprise called Syrian Dinner Project which was set up by five Syrian women in Aberystwyth with the support of a British Red Cross caseworker, Rose Bewick. Starting from a 30-person ticketed event in a community hall, the Syrian Dinner Project soon grew to cater for events for up to 120 guests, including Sunday pop-ups in a local restaurant.
Wellbeing, confidence, connection
Not only has the project enabled the women involved to move towards financial independence, it has also helped to connect them with their local community in Aberystwyth, increased their confidence and given them a sense of purpose and pride. Jonathan believes that the pop-up café idea developed by the Syrian women and Rose could also help refugees to become more integrated with their local community, offer a meeting place in which to practice speaking English whilst also being a protective factor against mental ill health. In the long term, it could also support people to transition towards independence from services too.
Framing next steps
Having a problem question helped us to start framing what our next steps in the project might be, and importantly what was in and out of scope for our discovery phase.
How might we build a service that:
- improves the wellbeing of refugees by supporting them into volunteering, voluntary work or paid employment?
- is financially self-sustaining in the short-term and makes a profit to re-invest into British Red Cross Refugee Services in the long-term?
Understanding the context first
We wanted to understand how the idea would meet the needs of the Syrian families Jonathan and his team in Abergele where supporting through the Syrian Resettlement Programme. We travelled to Wales to meet with caseworkers and beneficiaries and discovered multiple barriers to either getting a job or setting up a business, as the Syrian Dinner Project women and Rose had done. These barriers included having a good enough level of English and Welsh, as well as mental health needs and transport challenges due to living in a sparsely-populated rural area with limited travel options.
Why focus on employment?
One of our main concerns was going off-piste with an idea that might not be considered a priority for us as an organisation, because in recent years we have mainly prioritised addressing destitution across our services. One of the British Red Cross goals for displaced people over the next 10 years is that they “feel safe, live with dignity and have choice and opportunity on their journey and this involves “the opportunity to rebuild their lives”. Employment has been identified as the most important factor in defining successful refugee integration[i], earmarking it is an area to focus on. Many of us know, without reading reports, the importance of a job. How, aside from financial stability, it provides a sense of dignity and purpose, a social network, a place to learn, freedom, choice and much more.
“Your user defines what your service is”
writes Lou Downe in Good Services[ii]. When we first heard Jonathan’s idea we had plenty of ideas of how we might support refugees into independence. In London there are also lots of organisations working with refugees and asylum seekers and using food as a means of connecting people such as Migrateful, Breadwinners and Mo’s Eggs, which also got us excited. We have deliberately stepped back from jumping to solutions, and are starting with user needs.
This week and next, we will be meeting with refugees, asylum seekers and caseworkers supporting both groups, in London and Glasgow. We have also started conversations with Refugee Services managers across the UK.
Our questions for discovery are:
How are British Red Cross supporting refugees and asylum seekers to get voluntary or paid work?
How are social enterprises supporting refugees and asylum seekers to get voluntary or paid work?
What are barriers and pathways to volunteering or paid work for refugees and asylum seekers?
This will then help us to understand what user’s needs are and ensure we design a service that is both useful and usable.
Follow our blogs to hear about next steps and feel free to get in touch if you would like to know more: @SarahBargiela on Twitter.
[i] Social networks, social capital and refugee integration by Sin Yi Cheung and Jenny Phillimore
