2023 Shortlist | Breaking Barriers

Breaking Barriers

Shortlist – From Systemic Challenge to Meaningful Change

About the Charity

Breaking Barriers exists so every refugee can access meaningful employment and build a new life. Refugees are four times more likely to be unemployed and face numerous barriers to employment – including long gaps on CVs caused by lengthy asylum processes, limited English and IT skills, racism, misplaced employer perceptions around hiring refugees, and difficulty getting overseas qualifications recognised.

Breaking Barriers welcomes refugees into meaningful employment through: (1) tailored, 1-to-1 employment advice and guidance; (2) English and IT courses delivered at a variety of levels; and (3) skills workshops, paid work placements and permanent job opportunities with the charity’s 50+ corporate partners from across a variety of sectors. It works across London, Greater Manchester and Birmingham, and is this year set to expand to Glasgow and Liverpool in response to identifying a critical need there. Breaking Barriers is proud to have now supported more than 2,200 refugees from 96 countries on their employment journeys.

Charity number: 1161901  |  Breaking-Barriers.co.uk
Employment and Workforce Preparedness  |  England – London  | 26-100 paid staff

What the Board Achieved

Founded in Hackney (London) in 2015, Breaking Barriers has quickly expanded to support refugee clients across every London borough. In 2021, it expanded to two new regions beyond London, Greater Manchester and Birmingham, after identifying a critical need amongst refugee communities in those cities. The charity has now enrolled and supported more than 350 refugees across both new regions (and 2,200 overall) without compromising the award-winning quality of its support services – already 34% of clients across these new regions have achieved their goals of entering employment, education, volunteering, or training.

In both regions, Breaking Barriers has hired a local team of Employment and Integration Advisers with extensive knowledge of the cities in which they are working. These Advisers each support a caseload of approximately 30-40 refugee clients, and many are fluent in key languages such as Arabic, Dari, Farsi, Pashto, and Urdu (allowing better communication with refugees accessing the charity’s services). They have successfully built both formal and informal partnerships with local government, charities, and businesses in these new regions. Building on this success, the charity is set to expand to both Liverpool and Glasgow (both cities are home to high numbers of refugees and asylum seekers, and both lack a service that provides dedicated, comprehensive employment support for refugees). This expansion has been made possible through board leadership and trustees’ commitment to tackling an area of need that the UK does not have strong state-sponsored services or an infrastructure in place to properly support.

Refugees face unimaginable hardship upon fleeing war, persecution, violence and climate disasters, but upon arriving in the UK they face numerous additional challenges – including marginalisation, homelessness, mental health difficulties and being disproportionately impacted by the cost-of-living crisis. These factors and more combine to place them at increasing risk of poverty and destitution. This is exacerbated by heart-breaking crises in Afghanistan, Iran and Ukraine, which have caused thousands more people to seek refuge in the UK. The rising number of refugees and people seeking asylum has led to a wider dispersal of refugees nationwide (particularly with schemes like Homes for Ukraine). This means that everywhere in the UK must now be equipped to welcome and support refugees, but few have adequate support structures in place.

The Breaking Barriers board responded to this evolving challenge by taking bold steps to expand beyond London. The board undertook a mapping exercise of refugee populations nationwide, helping the charity determine where its services were most needed. The board held a 2030 vision and strategy away day, setting long-term expansion goals. Trustees introduced the charity to new contacts, potential partners and volunteer networks as it embarked on the first steps of expansion in Manchester and Birmingham. As the charity moved closer to expanding further, the board ensured that it stayed on track with its core goals, retaining what one trustee called a ‘laser focus on refugee employment support’, and continued its work on developing meaningful partnerships with other complementary organisations to form a wider eco-system of holistic refugee integration support nationwide.

Part of the charity’s success is down to its focus on building a board with relevant expertise as well as relevant lived experience. While many trustees bring a breadth and depth of experience from leadership roles across the public, private and charity sectors, 40% of trustees also have lived experience and are themselves from a refugee background (one is a former Breaking Barriers client).

Following the 2023 vision and strategy away day, trustees have taken on additional roles and responsibilities to support the expansion of the charity. They are putting their skills and experience to work in keeping the organisation on track, serving as advocates, making critical connections and developing partnerships with organisations working in key cities outside of London. This is helping to lay the groundwork and build the necessary infrastructure so that Breaking Barriers can launch and establish its services in new cities, effectively reach the communities it seeks to serve, and successfully support them by connecting them to the full range of services and community programmes they need to survive and thrive in the UK. For instance, trustees have hosted breakfasts for business leaders to encourage businesses to do more to support refugees into employment, hosted webinars, hosted dinners with major donors, provided specialist support and one-on-one training and mentoring to staff members, held meetings with potential new partners in expansion cities, and more.

The board’s leadership and support has directly impacted the success of its initial expansion into Manchester and Birmingham and made the continued expansion to other cities in the UK possible.