Bread and Roses
For Bread and Roses, learning the role of florist is a means to gain skills, knowledge, and confidence to better navigate the challenges of rebuilding lives. Women who join Bread and Roses are seeking refuge in the United Kingdom and are given an opportunity to flourish and fulfill her opportunity.
Bread and Roses will partner with Baytree Centre, an educational charity that empowers women and girl, to serve 10 women with a Flore Foundation grant. Both organizations work closely to build confidence that is essential to improve integration into a new community. In 2023, Baytree Centre reached 472 women with increasing access to employment, improving housing and taking on issues of inequity.
Bread and Roses is a 10-week welfare/support program for women with refugee backgrounds comprising floristry training, English language classes and signposting sessions that deliver a multitude of benefits. Participants benefit from the therapeutic quality of working with flowers and learning a new skill. English exercises are integrated into the floristry training curriculum, giving participants the opportunity to learn new vocabulary and practice speaking skills in a safe space. Information sessions after each floristry workshop increase participants’ awareness of relevant UK systems and local services. Referrals to services can be made at the request of participants. Training programmes provide participants with the opportunity to form social connections and friendships with other women living in the local area. Wherever possible participants join our alumni network after their programme is complete, attending monthly floristry sessions to sustain the community and support.
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Being an ecologically responsible florist is also hugely important to us not only from an environmental perspective but an anthropological one too. When you consider that climate is secondary only to conflict as a cause of the displacement of people, positioning ourselves as an eco conscious florist is paramount. The UN projects that there will be 200 million climate refugees by 2050 (The Uninhabitable Earth, David Wallace Wells).
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Refugees and asylum seekers in the UK come from diverse backgrounds and have had varied life experiences, meaning the pathway to integration is different for each individual. Women from refugee and asylum seeking backgrounds across the UK face particular barriers to rebuilding their lives. The lack of a national integration program in the UK means the availability and quality of support for refugees and asylum-seekers varies across the country. The Bread and Roses program seeks to redress these things by providing a culturally sensitive and inclusive, safe space to explore creativity and self expression, to build confidence and create meaningful connections. For many of our participants, this is the one small opportunity in the week for them to do something just for themselves.
IMPACT
93% of women report improved English language fluency
72% experience a greater sense of community
154 women from 15 countries have participated with Bread and Roses
