Building futures through skills, trust, and connection at Breadwinners

Breadwinners is a social enterprise supporting young refugees and asylum seekers in London and Brighton to build confidence, skills, and pathways into work. Through market stalls, mentoring, and employability programmes, they create opportunities for young people to find their place and shape their future, supporting their wellbeing along the way. 

But scaling that work takes the right skills, the right people, and the right connections. Through Reach, Breadwinners has been able to bring in trustees and volunteers with the skills needed to strengthen the organisation, expand its networks, and create lasting impact for everyone involved. 

As Emily Boling, Head of Programmes at Breadwinners, explains: 

“At Breadwinners, volunteers are absolutely central to everything we do. We simply couldn’t run our programmes without them. Each year we support around 250 young people, many of whom are asylum seekers without the right to work. Through our programmes, they gain real work experience, employability training, and, crucially, one-to-one mentoring. That mentoring relationship is where so much of the magic happens. 

“What Reach has enabled us to do is access a much broader and more diverse pool of people than we’d find locally. When volunteers come through Reach, they’re coming with a clear intention - they want to use their skills in a meaningful way. That makes a huge difference, both in the quality of candidates and in the experience for our young people. 

“We’ve seen this both with trustee recruitment and skills-based volunteers. A significant number of our trustee applications have come through Reach, and they are consistently some of the strongest candidates we see. They bring strategic thinking, governance experience, and access to networks that we simply wouldn’t otherwise have. Right now, as we go through a strategic review and develop new corporate partnerships, including pathways into employment, our trustees are opening doors, making introductions, and helping shape the direction of the organisation. 

“Some of our skills-based volunteers go even further. For example, our volunteer coordinator role is a pro bono position filled through Reach. That kind of support gives us real capacity as a small organisation. But more than that, these volunteers become thought partners. They bring experience from completely different sectors, challenge how we think, and help us see beyond our own assumptions. When you’re working in the charity sector for a long time, it’s easy to develop blind spots. Having people with different professional and lived experiences helps us grow in ways we couldn’t do alone. 

“The same is true in our mentoring programmes. We ask mentors to bring practical, work-based skills, things like CV writing, job applications, and navigating employment, because that’s what our young people need. This help is essential, but what’s really powerful is what happens beyond that. Over just a few hours a week, meaningful relationships build and the depth of connection they often achieve is incredible. 

“At our recent graduation, each young person came up with their mentor, and they spoke about their experience together. These are relationships built over eight weeks, and yet the trust, the confidence, the mutual respect - it’s extraordinary. Mentors often come in thinking they’ll be the ones giving knowledge, but they consistently tell us they get far more out of it than they expected. They learn so much about resilience, about different cultures, about what it really means to build a life in a new country. These connections with people whose lives are very different from their own change perspectives in a lasting way. 

“And for our young people, they don’t just work on improving English or building a CV, they learn to feel part of the community, building understanding of how to navigate life in the UK, and developing confidence in who they are.  

“One story that always stays with me is a mentor who had never experienced Ethiopian culture before. During a meal, her mentee introduced her to eating with her hands. Although completely unfamiliar at first, that simple moment of sharing food created a level of connection that went far beyond words. That’s what’s so special about these relationships. 

“As we’ve grown, we’ve also seen how this impact multiplies. Many volunteers stay involved beyond their initial role - becoming ‘super mentors’, supporting interviews, running mock sessions, or helping shape our programmes. They connect with each other too, sharing ideas, and building a wider community around Breadwinners. At a time when community can feel hard to find, that’s incredibly powerful. 

“Ultimately, Reach helps us find the right people at the right time - people with the skills, motivation, and openness to make a real difference. But more than just filling roles and carrying out tasks, the relationships and communities that are built are what truly strengthen our organisation, support our young people, and create growth on all sides. The impact doesn’t stop with the initial connection to a volunteer. It continues to ripple outwards, through our programmes, our team of volunteers, and the communities we’re all part of.”