Mission

Chatterbox helps refugees overcome employment barriers by providing them with work opportunities using their native language skills. The social enterprise arose from this insight: despite having above average levels of education and training, refugees in the UK were much more likely to be unemployed and in poverty. Highly motivated and skilled refugees routinely find that the only accessible alternatives to welfare and unemployment are clusters of unsocial, low skilled jobs with poor employment prospects. They become mired in spirals of underemployment, erosion of skills, lost confidence, and degenerated employment prospects.  Chatterbox taps into refugees' latent economic potential to then elevate their standing in the labour market by helping them accumulate local work experience and relevant professional networks. Our role:We provide refugees with training, support, and paid work opportunities that use their native language skills and cultural insights. This new opportunity offers refugees the chance to hit the ground running when they arrive in the UK, improving the likelihood that they can use the skills and experience that they have to the benefit of them and society as a whole. In this way, we also challenge the damaging mischaracterisation of refugees as burdens to the state rather than individuals who can make significant positive contributions, given the chance.

Category

Education and Skills

Additional Information

Our service:   We offer linguistic and cultural training for individuals, universities, and businesses, delivered online and in-person. Our services include language tuition, conversational practice, event curation, and public speaking. Our staff:   Chatterbox conversational practice partners, tutors, event staff, and speakers are highly skilled and motivated refugees from academic and professional backgrounds. In the UK, several factors combine to prevent these individuals from finding meaningful occupation matching their capabilities. This includes widespread discrimination against their overseas work experience and qualifications, which Chatterbox helps to overcome.