Our Year in Review: 2020 at Breadwinners
Like most charities, 2020 has not been an easy year for Breadwinners. But it has been one where we have proved our resilience, as well as the importance of sticking together as a community. This year, we supported 38 people on our programmes, taking the total number of programmes participants supported since our launch in 2016 up to 100.
In this blog post, we’ve put together just about everything that has happened at Breadwinners this year. You might want to buckle in - it’s been a busy year!
These are our top 3 achievements of 2020 (or, TL/DR!):
Launching our online shop and our new Proofers programme
Breaking our monthly sales record at our markets in November
Raising £10,000 - our biggest fundraising goal ever! - to open two new markets next year.
Mahmoud, Peyman, Endri and David on the stall at Victoria Park Market
Breadwinners & COVID-19
The COVID-19 pandemic required us to adapt dramatically in the space of a few weeks. We launched a new online sales platform whilst the markets were closed, and created a new programme, Proofers, to retrain our Breadwinners to assist as Online Sales Assistants. We’re hugely proud of our community for sticking together, and we have continued to support everyone we work with throughout both UK national lockdowns.
As above, for the first time ever, Breadwinners started selling bread online. We paired with Alessio of the micro-bakery Sumeria Bakehouse and we offer his fantastic bakes as one-off deliveries or as weekly or fortnightly subscriptions.
Our range has kept expanding, from a much-requested box of cinnamon buns, to our “Breakfast Pack” in partnership with fellow social enterprise Haven Coffee, to our “Treats Box” of cakes and buns which we launched in November. We’ve delivered over 1,600 deliveries across London zones 1-4 to date.
We had to close some market stalls for a few weeks in spring, but were able to keep them open during the second lockdown in November, even breaking our own monthly sales record despite the lockdown.
Of course, the other big change due to COVID is the launch of our Proofer’s programme, which was developed by our Programmes Manager, Charlotte, during the first lockdown. Our Breadwinners worked hard to retrain as Online Sales Representatives, collecting customer feedback and working to improve customer retention, whilst developing their professional phone skills, using databases and learning to work from home. Charlotte discusses the challenges of starting a new programme during a pandemic:
“The positive of any challenge is the personal growth in overcoming it. I am a goal-orientated person, so after getting over the initial 'how are we going to do this' thought, designing and delivering Proofers was new and exciting. Developing a new programme infrastructure in a matter of weeks and having a customer base there to provide Online Sales experience to the Proofers was a great feeling.
This feeling is what motivates and powers me through the screen fatigue, the seemingly small jobs of deciding what software to use and when creating training plans while sticking to the Breadwinners value of keeping it 'simple'.
We had competitions where the Proofers had to ask as many follow-up questions on calls to customers as possible or competitions to see how long a Proofer could keep a customer on the phone - which went from around 2 minutes at the beginning to 22 minutes a couple of months in. Late in the summer, we were also able to take an away day with the Proofers to Kent, a well needed retreat after all their hard work.”
Our Proofers programme will become a staple of what we offer at Breadwinners, as we keep try to keep up with our new, online, post-pandemic world!
Proofers, team and volunteers on an online training call.
Programmes, Events & Training
Of course, starting a new programme was a key event this year in terms of programmes, but it has been far from the only thing keeping us busy! We supported two cohorts of Risers this year, alongside 12 Breadwinners.
The first cohort of Risers were just about to finish the programme when the COVID-19 pandemic struck, but we were all so impressed by how much commitment and spirit the Risers and volunteer mentors brought to the online events so that we could finish the programme successfully. The graduation events on the Risers Programme are always wonderful, and we actually had three this year, as cohort 5’s graduation took place at the beginning of the year, followed by cohort 6 in April and cohort 7 in early December.
Being able to start the Risers Programme again in autumn after a short break was really refreshing, and being able to have a face-to-face graduation with cohort 7 made the end of the programme super special.
Across the programmes, we ran over 120 meetings and training sessions. This included employment-focused sessions such as interviews with people from different professions, information sessions on studying in the UK and support for writing CVs and cover letters, as well as fun activities such as designing tote bags, learning singing and acting skills and our end of year Zoom party!
We also ran several community building events, and a highlight of the year was our socially distanced fun run in World Refugee Week. Adie, volunteer mentor and keen runner, and Sarah, our Community Volunteer, organised a run where people taking part linked into a video call and ran together in their own parks. One of our Breadwinners and Proofers, Ruth, was the DJ and MC as we were all running and it was great fun. So many volunteers and supporters taking part (some even running a half marathon!) really made it exceptional.
Volunteer Adie went all the way to run a half marathon for our Refugee Week distanced Fun Run.
Progressions & Impact
One of the things we are most proud of at Breadwinners is how much passion and drive our young people have to progress into new and exciting roles. The majority of our Risers, Breadwinners and Proofers have used the skills developed on the programmes to move into roles in the food and hospitality sectors, as baristas, delivery drivers, chefs and waiting staff. We’ve also had people progress into areas as diverse as engineering and healthcare. Up to our latest review, 96.7% of our previous beneficiaries were still in employment.
However, our main aim at Breadwinners is to improve the wellbeing of the people we work with. 94% of the people we work with report a significant improvement in their wellbeing after working with Breadwinners, as well as a 97% increase in feeling an active part of a community and in feeling aspirational, motivated and hopeful for the future.
Team & Volunteers
This year, we’ve also had some major changes to our core team, as well as having the privilege to work with some wonderful volunteers. Earlier this year, Hassan joined the team as our operations coordinator after taking part in the Risers and Breadwinners programmes, and we also welcomed Zoe to join as our Communications Manager. Programmes Manager Charlotte moved up to full time, and we are also currently in the process of hiring a second Programmes Manager to work with her on the Risers programme. Our team just keeps growing!
We also cannot thank our wonderful team of volunteers enough. This year, our volunteer mentors delivered around 300 mentoring sessions to help our young people thrive in the UK. We also had volunteers work with us on event planning, product design, website design, videography and photography. Breadwinners truly wouldn’t function without our volunteer community!
Our newest product, the Christmas buns, created by our partners at Sumeria Bakehouse
Partners
In 2020, we’ve also grown some exciting new partnerships, including pairing up with independent bakery Sumeria Bakehouse for our online shop and bread delivery service. We are also working with Celtic Bakers to bring you more stalls across London including, currently, at Camberwell Green and Hammersmith Markets.
We are also working with Gaff café to bring our wonderful artisan bread into London’s cafés and restaurants, and are looking to expand this in 2021 too.
Fundraising
We couldn’t be more grateful for our generous donors and grant funders this year. Thanks to them, we’ve managed to keep all our services running throughout the year - even launching new ones! We were lucky to receive a generous amount of donations this year; we hit our biggest fundraising target ever of £10,000 in our Christmas match funding campaign, the Big Give, and our distanced fun run for Refugee Week also raised over £2,000.
In terms of grants, we received over £120,000 in grant funding this year, including emergency funding during the first lockdown, which allowed us to buy laptops for our Proofers to use.
We also received a generous donation from Booni, as we were selected as their cause to receive a donation of their profits for the month of August. This went towards funding community and wellbeing activities.
Charlotte, Programmes Manager, and Maisoun, current Breadwinner, with Charlotte’s Inspiring Comms award
Press & Awards
In 2020, Breadwinners featured in the press 12 times, including twice in the Hackney Gazette, and in the Daily Mirror and on the Social Enterprise UK website. We also won 5 new awards, including Programmes Manager Charlotte being named a 2020 Inspiring Communicator (see photo above!).
On the Blog & More
We’ve really enjoyed expanding our blog and social media this year. We published 38 blog posts, and with our most popular being our Social Enterprise Day Christmas Gift Guide and our blog post about our Refugee week Fun Run. We welcomed 13 contributors to write for our blog this year, and we can’t wait for even more new faces in 2021!
We also want to highlight our awesome video project with videographer Gui Sussekind Bailey, who kindly helped us produce some amazing videos featuring Breadwinner Jamal, director Martin and volunteer mentor Nazreen. You can watch them on Gui’s Vimeo account here.
Here’s to 2021!
We hope that despite this difficult year, you have found joy in the little things and solace in building your community, as we have at Breadwinners. Here’s to a safe and positive 2021.
All the best from the Breadwinners team,
Zoe, Charlotte, Hassan and Martin :)