Helping refugees in to employment.

Helping refugees into employment.

Who is a refugee?

Are there many refugees and asylum seekers in the UK?

What happens when you get refugee status in the UK?

What support is available for refugees in the UK?

Where does NEMI Teas add value?

According to the UN Refugee Convention, the definition of a refugee is someone who…

‘Owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group, or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality, and is unable to or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country’ (Article 1, 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees).

No. According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), by the end of 2018 there were 126,720 refugees, 45,244 pending asylum cases and 125 stateless persons in the UK. That’s around one quarter of a percent (0.26%) of the UK’s total population.

When a person is given refugee status, they have just 28 days to find accommodation and apply for mainstream benefits before they are evicted from asylum accommodation. Many refugees become homeless at this stage.

So for many, this marks the beginning of a new crisis. This is a huge barrier many must overcome before they can begin rebuilding their lives – securing an income, and becoming integrated into their communities.

Bodies like Refugee Council UK, Refugee Action, Transitions London amongst many others are there for them at this critical time and beyond. They provide crisis support and help to secure accommodation. And they ensure other basic needs are met by helping the refugees access health services to improve their physical and mental health. They also help them to understand the UK health service and so they can get the care they are entitled to.

To enable refugees to achieve long-term confidence and independence, they also provide training to improve their English and other vocational skills or build on existing qualifications. And in certain cases they also support them into employment that can sustain them and enable them to thrive.

We identified all the amazing work being done by refugee support bodies in the UK and recognised the gap of employment opportunities for refugees. So we decided to set-up a tea company, NEMI Teas, in October 2015 that would recruit refugees no questions asked as we set out to help them gain local work experience and provide them with a work reference which are two big hurdles refugees tend to face as they look to enter the UK workforce.

We have placed 18 refugees in to employment with 12 having gone on to part-time or full-time jobs or join education centres to further their studies. We provide jobs to the refugees across our entire supply chain as they work within the factory to blend and pack our teas, run tea stalls at external sites and Xmas markets as well as doing desktop research and social media posts.

We plan to set-up tea-carts and/or a tea-shop in 2020/2021 where we will employ refugees to gain hospitality work experience and then place them in to full-time employment with one of our corporate partners and/or with the 100+ cafes that we currently work with.

We aim to place 500 refugees in to employment by 2025!