‘A mini United Nations’: the cooking co-operatives helping refugee women find work
From Malmö to Brisbane, female refugees are creating inspiring businesses. Composite: Mark Lehn/ Rick Pushinsky/ Rachel Pick/ Ulf Svane
By: Business Call to Action
Food is at the heart of Majeda Khoury’s story. Imprisoned in Syria for feeding displaced people, she later came to the UK and became a chef at Migrateful, a social enterprise that organises cookery classes run by refugees. It was a vital stepping stone: today she runs her own catering company – The Syrian Sunflower.
Khoury is not alone: across the world, refugee and migrant women are finding employment and empowerment through cooking, as a growing number of businesses seek to use their culinary skills to help generate income and connect them with new communities.
“Such interventions can play an important role in lifting refugees out of poverty, by creating opportunities that they wouldn’t have had access to otherwise,” says Nazila Vali, deputy team lead at Business Call to Action, which works to accelerate progress towards the sustainable development goals, in part by helping their members “better articulate and increase their social impact”.
But such support also makes business sense: Vali points to research that shows refugee populations generate economic opportunities. “The inaccurate perception of refugees being a drain on resources needs to change,” she says.
From New York to London, Beirut to Glasgow, a growing number of entrepreneurs are getting the message. Here’s a taste of the trend:
Mu’ooz, Brisbane
Nestled in Brisbane’s West End, this unassuming restaurant has had a big impact on hundreds of lives. Since 2008, more than 230 African refugees, mostly from Eritrea and Ethiopia, have come through Mu’ooz for training and employment, staying for an average of eight to 12 months, and almost all going on into jobs or to set up their own businesses.
Saba Abraham in Brisbane’s Mu’ooz. Photograph: Mark Lehn/Guardian
Saba Abraham in Brisbane’s Mu’ooz. Photograph: Mark Lehn/Guardian
Saba Abraham in Brisbane’s Mu’ooz
Saba Abraham, a former Eritrean freedom fighter, is the figure behind it. Arriving as a refugee in Australia in the 1990s, she was astonished by the support she received, but nonetheless fell into a deep depression. “No matter how positive the welcome, the language and culture and system barriers always affect you,” she says.
To help others break that isolation, she started doing small-scale catering with a group of refugees. The point was simply to cook together and connect, but in year two they made $27,000 profit, says Abraham, and decided it was a viable business. The result was Mu’ooz.
Many of the women who have passed through the business were brought up only to work in the home, with little education, and have been traumatised by war, says Abraham. But at Mu’ooz they gain vital confidence, and leave a legacy of delicious food: a goat recipe introduced by a former employee from the Congo remains one of Mu’ooz’s most popular dishes.
Migrateful, London
Jess Thompson got the idea for Migrateful while teaching English to refugee women: “We went around the room asking about skills and they all said they loved to cook and would love to teach people to cook.”
Migrateful chef Elizabeth Kolawole Johnson. Photograph: Rick Pushinsky/Guardian
Migrateful chef Elizabeth Kolawole Johnson Photograph: Rick Pushinsky/Guardian
Migrateful chef Elizabeth Kolawole Johnson cooking up the perfect jollof at her class at Farewell Cafe & Kitchen
Thompson had just returned to the UK from work at refugee camps in Morocco and Dunkirk, and was looking for a way to continue to support refugees in London. After trying out a class at home with an Iranian woman and a bunch of friends, she decided this was it. In the two years since, Migrateful chefs have given 376 classes to more than 3,700 customers.
Before they start teaching, the chefs go through a training programme that covers everything from storytelling to class structure. The idea is not just to help them meet immediate needs (they are paid an average of £65, with expenses for travel and ingredients, for a 2.5-hour class) but also forge a path for the future. Five Migrateful alumni, including Majeda Khouri, have gone on to launch their own businesses.
Migrateful is already expanding out of London, with some classes running in Tunbridge Wells and a chef training programme launching in Bristol. “It’s a simple model,” says Thompson. “It’s easy to replicate.”
Flavours of Hope, Vancouver
Trixie Ling had lived in four countries by the time she was 10. Through all the changes, she found that one thing enabled her to find her feet: “Food was what helped introduce me to new people and to feel like I fitted in.”
Trixie Ling with Flavours of Hope vendors in Vancouver. Photograph: Rachel Pick/Guardian
Trixie Ling with Flavours of Hope vendors in Vancouver. Photograph: Rachel Pick/Guardian
Trixie Ling with Flavours of Hope vendors in Vancouver
It’s a lesson she has taken into adulthood. Last year, Ling – whose family ultimately settled in Canada – founded Flavours of Hope. It’s a social enterprise that organises pop-up dinners at which immigrant women share their food and stories; it also sells condiments at markets around Vancouver. In fact, its Venezuelan salsa has proven so popular, says Ling, that local grocery stores have started asking to stock it.
Like others in this space, Flavours of Hope is pushing back against industry norms by paying women a living wage. And if decent pay can help to empower them, says Ling, so too can the act of cooking itself: “This is the message that we need to give to refugees. But I think we also need to receive. And with cooking, the women are the ones in power. When they’re cooking, they know what they’re doing, they’re making this delicious food and they can represent themselves and their stories.”
Yalla Trappan, Malmö
For nine years, Yalla Trappan has been creating catering, tailoring and cleaning jobs for immigrant women in the Swedish city of Malmö. This worker-owned co-operative, which has its own restaurant plus sewing workshops in Ikea and H&M, started off with six members and now boasts 37, all of whom have a share of the business and an equal say in how it’s managed.
Yalla Trappan, Malmö, and founder Christina Merker-Siesjö. Photograph: Ulf Svane/Guardian
Yalla Trappan, Malmö. Photograph: Ulf Svane/Guardian
Yalla Trappan, Malmö, and founder Christina Merker-Siesjö (above right)
Chair and founder Christina Merker-Siesjö explains how she developed a methodology for building up women’s self-esteem – “the Yalla Trappan way” – by combining half a day of language and cultural training with half a day of practical work. The 37 owners all went through this process and now train hundreds of job seekers the same way. The benefits, says Merker-Siesjö, stretch to better health and democratic participation: many of the women had never voted until they joined Yalla Trappan.
Yalla Trappan, Malmö. Photograph: Rachel Pick/Guardian
Yalla Trappan, Malmö. Photograph: Rachel Pick/Guardian
She calls the co-operative, whose participants come from 17 different countries, a “mini United Nations”. “We focus on what we have in common and not what divides us. We have Yalla Trappan in common, and we are struggling for Yalla Trappan’s best because we own it, we rule it. And actually we have never had any conflict because of different religions or clothes or skin. What we pick up, of course, is knowledge about making fantastic food.”