In March this year, a group of unemployed women refugees from Iran, Afghanistan, Zimbabwe, Saudi Arabia, Eritrea and Sri Lanka gathered for the first time in a restaurant kitchen beneath some railway arches in east London to learn how to bake bread.

To begin with, the lessons were very quiet because the women were shy and hampered by poor English. None of them was brimming with self-confidence and some were dubious about the value of a course teaching bread-making skills.

By the end of the 10-week course, organised with the support of the Refugee Council, the mood within the group had changed dramatically. “There was much more laughter,” Jean Kern, the baker teaching the classes, said. More importantly, six of the eight people on the course had found part-time employment, and the lessons had had a transformative effect that went far beyond the teaching of cookery skills.

Just Bread is a Refugee Council project aimed at improving the employability of refugees, and the model has turned out to be simple but unexpectedly potent. The bread the women bake during the course is sold locally, subsidising the cost of running the programme and reinforcing the idea that the women are doing something constructive, rather than simply receiving charity.

After the trauma of fleeing their homes, families and countries, and the stress of applying for asylum, most refugees are dismayed to discover how hard it is to find work in the UK. Re-entering the jobs market can be difficult, sometimes forcing highly trained professionals — doctors, lawyers, engineers — to take low-paid, insecure work where their skills are wasted. Without work it is hard to integrate and begin the process of rebuilding their lives.

Anan (not her real name) arrived in the UK as a refugee in 2013 and claimed asylum. She does not want details of her home country, or the reasons behind her flight, to be revealed because she is scared of the potential consequences of being identified. Well-educated with a degree in IT and a master’s in business studies, Anan, 28, has found it hard to find a permanent job, particularly after the long period of enforced unemployment when she was applying for refugee status, when asylum seekers are not allowed to work. She said the wait to be formally recognised as a refugee last year left her feeling depressed.

“I was an asylum seeker for seven months. It felt like seven years,” she said. While she was waiting for a decision, she was housed in Middlesbrough. “They put me there, in a place where I knew no one. It was so depressing,” she said. For a few weeks she was employed on the minimum wage, on a short-term contract as a part-time shop assistant, but the contract was not extended.

“Before I came on this course, I was lonely, jobless, not integrated into society, living on jobseeker’s allowance. I was feeling so low and my self-esteem was going down, particularly because I am educated and qualified,” she said. She was sceptical at first about how a bread-making course might help, but a few weeks later she was in no doubt about the benefits of the programme. “It has changed my life,” she said.

Over the summer, Anan worked with five other refugee women who had graduated from the course, cooking for audiences at the Secret Cinema season in London. Throughout the 10 weeks, the women were supported by employment advisers from the Refugee Council, guiding them on how to begin looking for work in the UK. Anan now has a permanent job at the E5 Bakehouse, the bakery and coffee shop where the course was held.

Taking a break from baking while the flatbread was leavening, refugee women who were graduates of the most recent course sat at a wooden table at the back of the kitchen, talking about children and cooking, and laughing.

Lara Mepham, a volunteer with the project, said the course helped people to overcome culture and language barriers. “Baking is demonstrative. You don’t need to have that much English,” she said. “People come for different reasons. Some are desperate for five days’ work; for others, it was more about confidence-building. It is a win-win model. They are selling well-made bread, which is such an incredible thing. It gives them a sense that they are contributing something, not just receiving charity. By the end, people come out of their shells.”

Tahmineh Gashtasebi, 58, from Iran, found that the course had helped in her battle against loneliness. “The isolation makes you ill — you’re on your own all the time, with no family, no understanding of English,” she said.

She felt the environment in the UK had become more hostile towards refugees over the past few months, but the support of the course had helped her to feel resilient in the face of such unfriendliness. “People don’t understand that it is not a choice to be a refugee; it is an obligation. People come as a result of war or political activism,” she said. “I feel [there is] more hostility towards refugees now. It is not like before — then, when people found out I was a refugee, they would say, ‘you are more than welcome here’. Now, when I explain my situation, people say, ‘when do you go back?’ Of course, everyone wants to go back to their own country, but that is not always possible.”

She has been working part-time using the skills she acquired on the course, but has a more ambitious long-term vision. “I’d like to gather Iranian refugee women to start their own small bakery,” she said.

Since 1951, the Refugee Council has been helping people forced to flee their homes because of war, persecution or torture and who come to the UK seeking safety. The charity delivers services to vulnerable people in the UK, including traumatised children arriving alone, survivors of torture, and those forced into homelessness and destitution. Some donations to the charity go towards funding hot meals for asylum seekers and clothes for refugee children. But, in parallel, the organisation’s Refugees into Jobs programme focuses on helping them find work, so they can be independent and feel they are contributing towards their new home country.

Lisa Doyle, head of advocacy at the Refugee Council, said: “Refugees arriving in Britain often come with a wealth of skills and employment history. However, during the asylum process, people aren’t allowed to work, so this can mean protracted periods of unemployment during which people’s skills stagnate.

“When people are finally granted refugee status, they’re usually desperate to find work — eager to begin giving back to the country that welcomed them. But the reality is that many face an uphill battle when it comes to finding suitable employment. Women may face particular challenges: their English is often poorer than men’s and they’re more likely to have childcare and family responsibilities that make finding work tricky.”

She added: “The biggest problem is a lack of formal support to help refugees integrate. Aside from the help offered by charities such as the Refugee Council, refugees are often on their own when it comes to trying to find a job and settle into British life.”

These courses rely on donations from the public. The organisation has run three bakery courses so far, with great success, and a new one begins in January. It hopes to expand the programme to help more women.

“People look down on you if you are a refugee. When you apply for jobs, even if it is an easy job, they would rather not hire you,” Anan said, pinpointing how the employment advice sessions that came with the course have helped her. In the longer term, she plans to look for work that will use her IT training, but for now she is enjoying cooking and working at the cafe. “Even if I hadn’t got a job, I had so much fun on the course,” she said. “My mood lifted; I started to feel better about myself. My self-esteem is recovering.”

–Guardian News & Media Ltd