Dear readers! The summer is slowly giving way to autumn and what an August rich of activities we have had. We started new partnerships with St Magdalen Hall and Pistachio in Fields cafe and as we speak we are busy preparing the different dishes we will offer at Pullens festival this weekend. Looking Forward At St Magdalen Hall we catered for their summer party and at Pistachios in the fields we were given the opportunity to sell our products and display our artwork at their Calais fundraiser. Both events were successful and we met with many new people who have a genuine desire to support our cause. We very much hope for these partnerships to be long-term and fruitful for all. At St Magdalen Hall we are planning to offer unique menus for their birthdays parties and weddings and at Pistachios in the Filed run our first Syrian community dinner in October. We thank Rob, the owner for the opportunity and his great support of our charity. At Pullens we are thrilled to have the opportunity to showcase our food offer of traditional dishes from Syria cooked using family recipes and we are honoured to be the only food provider at the festival. September and Beyond We have received a generous donation from Team Lewis marketing Company and I have had the honour to be interviewed and featured in their book” The Silent rebellion, becoming a modern leader” which talks about my journey setting up the Refugee Café and now Plateful café etc. In September the book will be launched and my interview will be available to promote Plateful cafe extensively. Our search for a commercial Kitchen continues but not with much luck as what we have been offered is either domestic, too far, without storage etc. Since leaving Parkside Community Centre we have been fortunate to receive many commissions for large catering events at universities and also corporates and it has been very challenging to cook from a domestic kitchen. We continue to grow without a commercial kitchen to grow in! You might know of a kitchen in your area available at peppercorn rent for our small young charity ? Having a commercial kitchen which we could call our own would make a huge difference and would mean we could train the next cohort of 6 chefs, expand our catering offers branching out to bigger and bigger events and making a huge difference to a bigger group of aspiring chefs in the area. Our beneficiaries greatest aspiration is to work, making a contribution to the local economy and society rebuilding their lives after years of trauma and upheaval. They do not want to continue to rely on benefits to survive. Being unemployed is demeaning and shameful as all come from professional backgrounds with a great aspiration to continue with their previous job,providing for their families! With your continuing support we will, one day achieve our dream and offer pathways to employment to many more refugees!
Good day everyone. I hope you are enjoying your summer 2024. At Plateful Café we are as busy as ever despite not having a permanent place yet. We are exploring different opportunities to secure at least a commercial kitchen to continue to cook for events and make our products. Summer 2024 Events We are in consultation with Magdalen Hall in SE1 to cook for their events and the same with Stanstead Lodge in SE6.The first event at St Magdalen is on the 10th of August when we will be providing all the food for their Summer Fayre. We have also started a new collaboration with Pistachio in the Fields Cafe and are thrilled to sell our merchandise at their Care for Calais fundraiser on August the 15th. They have also graciously agreed to display and sell our paintings in the café for one month. We are also looking for new premises to share with GRACE Refugee Aid and are exploring the use of kitchens in local schools after school hours. We were thrilled to be at the Rising Sun collective street party on the 13th of July and forge new collaboration. The street party was a huge success with our food selling out in 4 hours. We cant wait to go back and take part in a Latin Fiesta this summer which we are planning together for August. July & August We continue to cater for the events and this month we are delighted to cater for University of Central London on the 25th of July. We are also starting to cater for wakes. The first wake is on the 10th of August to celebrate the life of Anne Hignett our long-term supporter and volunteer who passed away in July. Anne was an incredible lady who helped for years with cooking, driving, assisting the café and befriending. Anne recruited also other helpers and supporters and to this day they are still supporting our charity by mainly attending our dinners. She truly cared for our beneficiaries and showed a great commitment to their long-term future. She strongly believed they should have the same opportunities as everyone else, rebuild their lives and play a full part in the local society and economy. She was so incredibly happy when we opened the Café last September and visited regularly to have lunch or dinner, bringing family and friends. She was always there and every week she gave at least 2 hours of her time helping with whatever needed doing. We are all missing her incredibly! She was very generous to the very end by also donating her car to Plateful to be driven by one of the refugees when we start a take away service. We are so sad she is gone and may she rest in peace. We will ensure her legacy continues when we open a take away service. We will persevere and continue in our efforts to find a permanent venue with your support and care.
Moving On Southeast London’s favourite community café has had to leave its home in the Parkside Community Centre on Lewisham Road. Luckily though, our tireless volunteers have been able to team up with moving to The Star of Greenwich, a community-owned pub with stacks of character and an international reputation. The Star was recently featured in an LA Times article about the survival of British pubs in a post-pandemic economy, so many of us are optimistic that the forced change of location could turn out to be a blessing in disguise. Moving to The Star of Greenwich Our mission continues to be about helping refugees get on their feet. By hiring chefs from all over the world the café provides a safe and welcoming space where migrants can develop skills that will help them find employment. More than that though, the Plateful will continue to give chefs the chance to celebrate and share the dishes that are important to them. For customers, this also means you will be exposed to a wider range of culinary delights than ever before. Nahed, a chef from Syria who has worked with Plateful for several years, spoke about how she feels about the move. Rather than being worried, Nahed expressed optimism about the possibilities that changing location might bring. “I’m not worried, I think maybe it’s a blessing actually. It can be very quiet here and not many people walk past. So, there’s a good chance there will be more business when we move which might mean there is more work for me too! At the moment I only work here one day every fortnight so I’m hoping that I might be able to get more hours in Greenwich.” The Star of Greenwich is located just off Trafalgar Road in East Greenwich, so it is hoped that a busier setting will encourage more people to try our fantastic food. A Chef’s Story Nahed went on to explain how Plateful had helped her personally and expressed hope that the change of location would allow others to benefit from a similar experience. “Working this job has helped me in many ways. My English is fine now but a few years ago, frankly, I didn’t know how to say my own name. I’ve also met so many new people and learnt how to use new equipment in the kitchen like the coffee machine. Now I have a good CV and a food hygiene certificate which meant I could get a job working at a nursery too.” For the newer refugee chefs who are still developing their English and getting qualified, there is certainly hope that moving to The Star of Greenwich will provide opportunities for others to follow in Nahed’s footsteps. Unfortunately, there are still a couple of obstacles to overcome before we can establish ourselves as a permanent fixture at the Star. While regular events are planned for the rest of the year, we are waiting on funding which would allow The Star to install a new Kitchen on the 1st floor of the pub. This would mean Plateful’s talented chefs would be able to cook on-site rather than bringing in our food from outside. To help make this dream come true we encourage you to come down to the three-course Peruvian dinner which will take place at the Star of Greenwich on the 14th of June.
Recently we had a piece about about the great work we’re doing at Plateful Cafe helping refugees, on South London News – South London Press & Mercury. Read a summary below or full article here. Plateful Café, located in Lewisham, celebrates its one-year anniversary with pride. Founded by Iolanda Chirico, the café serves as a platform for refugees to display their culinary skills and offers a variety of cuisines to the local community for the sole aim of helping refugees. Operating three days a week, it provides meals, catering services, and sells artisan products. The café pays its cooks the London Living wage and relies on grants, donations, and trading income for sustainability. Ms. Chirico, along with a team of paid cooks and volunteers, has witnessed significant positive impacts on the refugees’ lives, including improved health, language skills, and confidence. Plateful Café recently hosted a Persian festival, showcasing the talents of chefs like Hadis a refugee, who left Iran and found a new life in the UK. The café’s bistro nights highlight different cultures through food, music, and staff contributions. These events offer the community a chance to enjoy diverse cuisines and reinforce the café’s commitment to helping refugees integrate and thrive.
Yesterday (7th), marked the end of Volunteer’s Week. As the name suggests, an annual celebration and recognition of the contribution that millions of people make across the UK through volunteering. To say that volunteers and the volunteering sector, in general underpin our local communities in this country would be an understatement. Volunteers provide a vital role and support a whole host of different activities: from community outreach to those most vulnerable, sport, all the way through to the arts and culture. And how could we get forget food! In a society that, unfortunately, feels increasingly isolating and obsessed on the individual, the continued existence of volunteers are a source of inspiration, encouraging us to think beyond ourselves and instead, into wider communities that we’re a part of. Simply put, we would not have got to where we are without the countless hours of work our volunteers have committed to Plateful Café. From our event staff helping at in-person events, the fundraising team seeking funding to help our charity grow and of course not forgetting the tireless work of our founder, Iolanda Chirico, does in making sure all areas of Plateful Café are moving in the right direction and towards our goal of having a café staffed and run by refugees. For Volunteers’ Week this year, we thought we would share two testimonies from our volunteers who’ve been volunteering with Plateful Café sharing how they got started at the charity and their thoughts on their respective journey and things to come! Albert, Market Stall Volunteer I started volunteering with Iolanda at what was then the Refugee Café in December 2020. Initially, I was part of the fundraising team, researching for grant applications, but soon switched to helping out on market stalls. This is where I discovered just how good to cause, and the products truly were. All the food was of such high quality, and clearly made with love. As I learned more about the chefs and how the organisation functioned, I knew it was something I wanted to keep on being a part of. Helping refugees find work and put down roots by sharing their cuisine and culture – what’s not to love? I became a regular face at Woolwich Market, and also helped out with other markets and events. I then took on responsibility for the web shop, but talking to people about our food and the people we worked with was still by far my favourite part of volunteering. Since the transition from Refugee Café to Plateful, I have helped with a couple of events – most notably our launch at Goldsmiths. I can’t wait for us to start trading at markets again, and more importantly, for us to finally achieve what we’ve all been working towards: opening a café staffed and run by refugees, where the community can come together around a table laden with delicious food! Tejan, Marketing Lead We’re always looking for more volunteers to help with Plateful Café and if you think this sort of thing is for you, why not have a look at our current vacancies!
The idea behind Plateful Cafe is simple. We employ refugees with a talent for cooking and they use their skills to share amazing food with the local community. People who could otherwise wait years to enter the UK workforce find meaningful work more quickly, and Londoners benefit from the amazing culture they bring with them. But as much as the idea is straightforward, putting it across visually is not so much. We wanted to show that Plateful Cafe is the place to come for vibrant, healthy food and that doing so will benefit the community. The design also needed to work across the organisation, from the cafe itself to our catering and our market stalls. That’s a hefty brief. So, we kept it simple. We focused on three core parts of our mission and grew the design from there. The Plate As obvious as it sounds, the plate is central to everything we do. A full plate means you’re fulfilled, safe, and not wanting. It also implies arrival, togetherness, and the ability to provide to others. Our plate is one of variety, filled with food from many sources and cultures. We were inspired by an Arabic design to form the border of our logo. This design will show up all across our brand, from jam labels to banners. The Heart But Plateful Cafe isn’t like other cafes – there’s a lot more to it than the tableware, which provides things for people to consume. Somehow, we needed to show that this food is connected with refugees. That it has a social impact. And that it is a warm place of welcome. How better to show this than with a heart? One that isn’t cutesy or kitsch but that unashamedly sits at the core of everything we do. Just like the cafe itself is refugee-led, the logo revolves around the heart at its centre. The Beetroot A plate and a heart go some way to describing our charity, but they miss one crucial thing – our cooking. This was the most difficult part of the design. Should we focus on the process of preparation, with utensils showing the expertise of our chefs? Or should we focus on the chefs themselves, with a chef’s hat? We tried both options, but they weren’t quite right. In the end, we decided that it’s the food itself that helps our chefs connect with the community and vice versa. The humble beetroot shows that we’re a family kitchen, not something manufactured or artificial. Our food is healthy, handmade, and unique. And the cafe itself helps refugees in south London put down roots and flourish in their new environment. Our first design went through a couple of mutations before we were happy with it. We took inspiration from our very own pickled beetroot for the colour palate, and got help creating a custom font for the typography. But the core elements were there to stay – a full plate, a kind heart, and quality, fresh food that helps the community grow. Final Logo
Firstly, let’s establish what is Plateful Café? Plateful Café is a social enterprise that connects refugees and local people through a shared love of good food. Our primary objective at Plateful is to establish a physical café where we can serve food lovingly created by our Refugee Chefs. There were a couple of motivations at hand when we decided to set up Plateful Café. First let’s start with the obvious – fantastic food, food is as close as we really get to a universal shared language. In the absence of a common language, food is such an interesting insight into another culture: from the extraordinary precision of sushi to the shared eating experience of Injera, a food popular in Ethiopia. We wanted Plateful to be an insight into the lives and stories of the Refugee chefs who lovingly create the dishes. Whilst much of life is sadly left behind when you are forced to flee your home, knowledge and recipes remain. In this way, food for many of us is so much more than just what’s on your plate. Secondly, the unfortunate reality is that in many charities that involve refugees creating and selling their products, the refugees themselves are detached, or at worst removed, from important decisions and directions the charity takes. At Plateful we are committed to ensuring that every decision we make not only puts the interests of Refugees first but, crucially, is made with Refugees. Finally, we wanted the café and our events leading up to its formation to be a springboard for greater social and cultural cohesion. Today, more than ever, we seem to live in echo chambers. We socialise with the same people, see the same views on LinkedIn, go to the same restaurants. Plateful Café aims to be an antidote to that by creating a space where people from different backgrounds can come together, regardless of social status or background, to share a love of good food. The pay-what-you-can pricing system and the location of the café in a community-owned pub are designed to encourage this kind of interaction. Our Valentine’s Day Dinner on the 15th of February officially marks the start of our journey and it is exciting. We know the journey will most certainly not be a smooth one, but we’ve got a fantastic (growing!) team and we’re all united by a common goal: spreading world flavours by refugee chefs. If you are free, we’d love for you to join us for our dinner later this month: not only to try delicious food but to meet a community of like minded people, all committed to making our society just that bit of a nicer place to be. We hope to see you there.
