Vickie Wambura

Migrateful helps refugees and asylum seekers on their journey to employment and independence and promotes integration. It runs cookery classes led by migrant chefs struggling to integrate and access employment due to legal and linguistic barriers. The cookery classes provide ideal conditions not just for learning English and building confidence, but also for promoting contact and cultural exchange with the wider community. We train our chefs through weekly workshops, taking them on a journey from “passionate home cook” to “confident cookery class teacher.” Sessions begin with English conversation or confidence building exercises. Participants then take turns teaching the rest of the group how to cook their traditional cuisine, before all sitting down together to share the meal they have prepared. Participants build connections and work on further developing their English. When our chefs feel ready, they deliver evening cookery classes to paying customers, supported by Migrateful. These paid classes take place in cafes, or customers can host a class in their own home for themselves and their friends. Each class lasts around three hours, with an average of ten paying participants per class. Since Migrateful was founded in July 2017, we have run over 200 cookery classes with 2,000 participants and now have 16 chefs from Iran, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Egypt, Tunisia, Albania, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Ecuador and Cuba teaching their cuisines regularly.