The need for our services is accelerating.
There are over 300,000 refugees in the UK, a significant increase in recent years, and yet despite the obvious urgent need, refugees are still four times more likely to be unemployed.
Over the last seven years, we have increased our impact through the expansion of our services nationally, supported over 2000 clients towards reaching their employment goals and continued to build a community of businesses, funders, and donors who are passionate about supporting our work.
We want to continue this growth and impact by taking significant steps toward meeting our vision of ensuring every refugee can access meaningful employment and build a new life.
By 2030 we want:
- To support 4,000 people per year – including those facing the toughest barriers to entering the job market.
- 100% of the clients we have supported to move further towards meeting their goals and over 50% of these clients will go on to achieve an outcome in education, training, volunteering, or employment.
- We will do this by working with sector-leading responsible businesses, being data-led and evidence-based in our approach and working collaboratively with the wider sector.
- To make this possible we will need to raise up to £14m income annually, raise public awareness of refugee needs, and sustainably invest in our people and infrastructure.
To reach our goals we are prioritising the following strategic areas:
- Support more individuals in more geographies across the UK. Our current model lends itself to urban areas with high-density populations. With increased refugee dispersal, we need to develop alternative models to increase our geographical reach.
- Segment our support model to have flexible and streamlined products, using data to understand how we can better support different client groups to achieve outcomes.
- Be accessible for refugees at any stage of work readiness. We will ensure easy access to our services, no matter a client’s length to the labour market, education level, or English language capabilities.
- Generate impactful partnerships with private and public sector organisations that further our purpose. This will mean co-creating hundreds of jobs across the UK, meaningful volunteering opportunities, and tailored employability support.
To enable this impact, we will:
- Maximise donations from existing funding streams and invest in key areas of fundraising growth, building on the long-term and mutually beneficial relationships that have been a foundation for our growth to date.
- Raise the profile of Breaking Barriers as a specialist employment charity and change narratives about the refugee experience to enable refugees to effectively integrate in the UK. We will raise awareness of refugee employability needs and experiences through sharing our data, insights and the lived experience of our clients.
- Invest in growing our infrastructure and staff structures mindfully. We will grow our staff teams and prioritise employee engagement and culture. We will invest in infrastructure and back-office processes to ensure effective growth and that as much of our income as possible goes directly to supporting refugees