A new quarter brings a new Work.Life charity fundraise, and this time it was the turn of our London Fields space, who chose to support the incredible grassroots charity Breadwinners, with an evening of Life Drawing.
Breadwinners was set up in 2016 by Martin Cosarinsky Campos and since June 2017, their main focus has been to train and employ refugees who sell homemade organic bread on farmers’ markets across London. Their main focus is to couple their successful market stall model with work experience and mentoring support for young unaccompanied people seeking asylum.
They offer two separate programmes: the Breadwinners Programme and the Risers Programme. The ‘Risers’ programme provides early support for young people (16-24 years old) who are seeking asylum in order for them to build transferable skills, grow their network and gain UK work experience. The ‘Breadwinners’ programme supports refugees who already have status but cannot find employment in the UK.
What makes Breadwinners special is as a company they invest the funding to set up market stalls which sustain themselves from bread sales.
During the evening, Martin read out some amazing facts about Breadwinners. In just the 3 years they have been active, they have secured 5 weekly market stalls in London, delivered 137 mentoring sessions, selling over 13,500 loaves of organic bread!
Their focus for 2019 is simple: expand the market stalls from 4 to 8 and employ a total of 16 refugees. Alongside this, they plan to develop a volunteer work experience and mentoring programme that helps 28 young unaccompanied asylum seekers with the necessary skills, references, network, mentoring support and mental wellbeing for when they are granted refugee status and are able to work.
If this charity speaks to you like it did us, you can get involved in many ways, check them out here.
We couldn’t think of a more fun way to raise money than hosting our first ever Life Drawing class! It was a smashing, raising over £500 for Breadwinners!
Our evening began with a short presentation from Martin, who summarised the work Breadwinners do, encouraging us to consider how we all landed our first jobs and comparing that to the hardship of a refugee facing not just a new country, but no transferrable skills to even consider applying for a job. We then kicked off our Life Drawing Class with a fabulous man called Patch proudly modelling for us. A special thanks to our lovely Hammersmith Membership Assistant Sophie who led the session for us!
We’d would like to say a huge thanks the volunteers, our lovely model and the London Fields Charity Committee. The evening was brilliant, before long everyone was a picture of concentration, the room absolutely silent, as everyone worked on their masterpieces, only breaking for a quick bite… and a top up of drinks.
A final thanks to everyone who attended the event and donated to support this amazing charity for a fantastic evening! Have a charity in mind that we could support? Please get in touch at hello@work.life.