.png)
In 2016 I moved to Oxford from Syria. I had been a social worker for the Danish Red Cross, supporting mostly Iraqi refugees in Syria. Now suddenly I was a refugee myself. I realised people here needed help, so I set up Syrian Sisters, a women’s group to support Syrian and all other Arabic speaking women. We focused on helping people to settle, make new friends, and navigate all the English services. We helped empower them.
But we found lots of women could not get a job and struggled to engage- there were barriers to them around language, culture, some people didn’t want to work with men. I always wanted to set up a business but I did not know how. Then Annie and Makena came to me and said they had got some money to support a new community enterprise. And I felt more confident because we could start it together.
We started Damascus Rose Kitchen at Flo’s and at the beginning in the tiny kitchen. It was very hard. We didn’t know lots of things- we didn’t have a trained chef, we didn’t know any of the regulations, it was very confusing. But Annie and Makena and Pippa helped us get this started. We started doing some catering, some pop ups.
I had a very good network so I could get catering clients. Because of the Syrian Sisters group I had done work with the university on the Multaka project, that meant I knew the university so they started to use us for catering. And people liked it so then we got other people through that. Weddings and parties. We always have leftovers and people love our doggy bags!
We got more confident and grew. Then I decided to take a leap and responded to the tender put out by the Old Fire Station to run their cafe. And they accepted us. There was also a big business that applied but they wanted it to go to a community. A big company applied too, but they said the big company can go anywhere and instead they wanted to support us to be a community cafe.. They supported us to get started.
Damascus Rose Kitchen set up in 2021. Now in 2024, it employs 9 cooks plus me as Director. So we pay a salary for 10 refugee women, and sometimes extra helpers come to do service at catered events. Several of the women I employ have moved on to get other jobs so I can train new people. Fadia and Basma went to get other catering jobs and Hadir now has her own business too. I want to provide training for more people so they can work in the UK in kitchens. Our company also pays for things at Syrian Sisters- like profits from our company paid for the Christmas meal Syrian Sisters did. We are doing a regular community meal now that also trains women in cooking.
The important thing is finding good people and making good things happen.
Now lots of other people in the community want to set up a business. Jacqui from AfiUK came to me and said she has people who want to set up a catering business and she doesn’t know how to help them so can I help them? So now I am getting hopefully paid through Owned By Oxford to advise the new people setting up their business.
Flo’s at the time when we were starting 2021-2022 was so helpful, this was the most supportive partnership to set up Damascus Rose Kitchen together. Then, The Old Fire Station- they are very really helpful and they made it easy for us to work with them. They wanted a community group and made it possible for us to work together. This is unusual and very important.
The University has worked with us lots, and you know people say they are hard to work with. But they wanted to work with me on Multaka and that was how we set up the partnership that has been good for Syrian Sisters and Damascus Rose Kitchen.
Other partnerships have been difficult. Some funders and authorities we applied to never gave us funds and I could never find a way in, doors closed. But then they still wanted to use us and take credit for Damascus Rose Kitchen in their impact reports.
Other enabling organisations promise support, but when we need it we can’t get it. When we have been successful with grant funding it's been so hard to administer. Like the ESCALATE grant. I had to give them a link of every single thing I would buy with the money before I bought it.
We’ve been trying to get to use this large beautiful empty kitchen at the county council in order to provide catering training for refugee women. And the senior officers really want it to work, they came to meet us and promised it will happen. But the officers in their team are stopping it from happening. It’s not moving and there are so many regulations. I am not sure they really want it to work. There is a great empty kitchen. Why can’t we just use it? It's been made more complicated than it needs to be.
Better support for growing social enterprises
Now that DRK is getting bigger I need more specialised support on how to grow a business, especially hospitality business. I don’t really know who to ask for help with this different kind of larger social business support.
Access to Space: make it simpler
The example mentioned above with the kitchen at the county that could be put to good community use shows how often accessing assets and spaces is made very complicated- we need to simplify processes in order to make it easier to use spaces and assets.
Understand the way the community works
In order for systems to be suitable for the community to engage with, people in the councils and the funders need to work directly in the community, with us. They need to learn from us and together we need to learn to make it less complicated. There are so many meetings, with lots of incomprehensible job titles. It needs to be less formal, more enabling. We don’t have the resources to go to so many meetings and keep up with the changing regulations.
This case study is part of the 'Community wealth building: big conversations' project. These case studies are in the voice of the people who gave them. They seek to honestly present their successes, as well as the challenges of trying to build a more just, sustainable economy and community. We encourage conversation - so if you want to get in touch and talk more to any of the groups, please do.
.png){kind=small}