Advertisement
Employment

Changemakers: Mursal Hedayat's Chatterbox is transforming refugee employment

Chatterbox connects underutilised talent with the growing demand for language skills

This week’s Changemakers Top 100 special edition features the world’s leading thinkers, shakers and agitators. Throughout the week we’ll be highlighting just a few online.

Hedayat came to the UK from Afghanistan as a refugee in 1994. Her mother, a civil engineer fluent in four languages, struggled to find work in her field after obtaining refugee status.

Hers is not a unique problem. A Deloitte report from 2017 found 38 per cent of Syrian refugees in Britain had a university education, yet the refugee unemployment rate sits at around 70 per cent. Hedayat set up Chatterbox, an organisation connecting underutilised talent with a growing demand for language skills by training and employing displaced people to teach their native language using an online platform, transforming their employment prospects.

wearechatterbox.org

Read the full article in this week's Big Issue.
Find your vendor
Tom Grennan is here to help

Image: YouTube/Chatterbox

Advertisement

Subscribe to your local Big Issue vendor

If you can’t get to a Big Issue vendor every week, subscribing online is the best way to support vendors to earn a legitimate income and work their way out of poverty.
Vendor martin Hawes

Recommended for you

View all
Get ready for the next Great Resignation as workers say they're burned out and yearning for joy
Work

Get ready for the next Great Resignation as workers say they're burned out and yearning for joy

AI skills will soon be as necessary for job seekers as Microsoft Word. Who will be left behind?
ai
Artificial Intelligence

AI skills will soon be as necessary for job seekers as Microsoft Word. Who will be left behind?

No, unions are not 'holding the country to ransom'
Trade Unions

No, unions are not 'holding the country to ransom'

Three-quarters of Labour voters back a four-day working week: 'Brits are burnt out'
Four-Day Working Week

Three-quarters of Labour voters back a four-day working week: 'Brits are burnt out'

Most Popular

Read All
Renters pay their landlords' buy-to-let mortgages, so they should get a share of the profits
Renters: A mortgage lender's window advertising buy-to-let products
1.

Renters pay their landlords' buy-to-let mortgages, so they should get a share of the profits

Exclusive: Disabled people are 'set up to fail' by the DWP in target-driven disability benefits system, whistleblowers reveal
Pound coins on a piece of paper with disability living allowancve
2.

Exclusive: Disabled people are 'set up to fail' by the DWP in target-driven disability benefits system, whistleblowers reveal

Cost of living payment 2024: Where to get help now the scheme is over
next dwp cost of living payment 2023
3.

Cost of living payment 2024: Where to get help now the scheme is over

Strike dates 2023: From train drivers to NHS doctors, here are the dates to know
4.

Strike dates 2023: From train drivers to NHS doctors, here are the dates to know