Interview with Volunteer Aref

Aref is a Kurd from Afrin, Syria, he came to the UK seeking safety and the chance to rebuild a life marked by years of conflict, multiple displacement with his family, persecution, discrimination and instability. Aref arrived in the UK hoping for dignity, stability, and the opportunity to contribute.

 

But shortly after his arrival, the UK government announced a pause on asylum decisions for Syrians. “I had only just arrived, trying to understand the system and find my footing,” he explains. “Then suddenly everything stopped, my life, my plans, all frozen.”

 

Since that announcement in December 2024, he has lived in a constant state of limbo. “It’s been mentally exhausting,” he says. “You can’t work, can’t study properly, can’t make plans. You’re just stuck, waiting, with no control over your future.”
The uncertainty has taken a toll. “This pause means I can’t move forward with my life. I want to study, work, and contribute, but I’m not allowed. Instead, I live with anxiety every day.”

 

Ending the pause would be life-changing. “If the government resumed decisions, I could finally start living, not just surviving. I could rebuild, focus on my goals, and give something back.”

The possibility of being forced to return to Syria. “It’s not safe. The country is fractured. HTS, a group known for Islamist extremism, controls the central government and imposes harsh and radical rules. But many areas are outside even their control. There are warlords, armed militias, and regions with no real governance at all.

 

He continues: The danger is real. Sectarian, ethnic, political, and religious differences can still cost people their lives. Kidnappings, detentions, and assassinations are common. The same old regime henchmen are still active, and many current officials are under global sanctions. Israeli airstrikes regularly hit targets inside Syria. It’s chaos, there is no safety, no justice, and no protection.”

 

When asked that conservatives suggested most Syrian asylum claims were related to the threat posed by Assad’s government and those people could return when it was safe to do so?

“It’s a dangerous oversimplification. The threat was never only Assad. 14 years of war destroyed the country’s structure. It’s the entire ecosystem of chaos that still exists. The country is fractured, sectarian and ethnic hostility have become more prominent, with lawless areas controlled by different armed groups. The danger is still there, just with more faces and more flags. Syria isn’t safe to return to. Not for me.”

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Iolanda founder of Plateful Cafe

Why Plateful Cafe?

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.

Plateful Cafe Celebrating Volunteers

Celebrating Volunteers Week

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!