Mazí Mas at the launch of Parliament Week

Following on the heels of our Albany events, Mazí Mas will taking part in Parliament Week 2013, whose theme is ‘Women in Democracy.’ Parliament Week (November 15 - 21) is a programme of events and activities that inspire, inform and connect people across the UK with Parliament and democracy, and this year celebrates the role of women in democracy, and explores how their voices can be better heard. Mazí Mas director Niki was invited to speak about Mazí Mas at the launch of Parliament Week today; here is the full text of her speech.

My name is Niki Kopcke and I’m the founder and director of Mazí Mas, a social enterprise that creates employment for migrant and refugee women through pop-up restaurants and events catering. We give unemployed and underemployed women a platform to capitalise on the amazing culinary skills they have developed over years of caring for their families, and support them as much as we can to set up their own food businesses, which is a dream for many of them.

We wanted to participate in Parliament Week because the theme this year – ‘women in democracy’ – speaks directly to the work that we do. I started Mazí Mas because I wanted to give women a path out of long-term unemployment, which is particularly high among migrant and refugee women: because foreign professional qualifications aren’t recognized, because their English may not be fluent, because they are often socially isolated and have little support to integrate in British society, because in some cases they are stigmatised or actively discriminated against. But most of all: because many are mothers who lack a recent employment history and are told, time and time again, that they are ‘unskilled.’

We believe that these women are actually some of the most skilled members of society. Not only are many of them phenomenally skilled cooks, they also possess managerial and entrepreneurial skills which go completely unacknowledged – because at the end of the day, raising a family and managing a household looks a lot like running a business. We believe these women are ideally placed to become self-employed small business owners, which is what many of them dream of doing. They dream of opening a café or small restaurant, of starting a catering or takeaway service – of applying the skills they have developed in the private realm to the public realm. We see business – and food business in particular – as an essential part of women in democracy, because for many women it holds the promise of becoming full and independent participants in public life.

But that’s just one side of the story. ‘Women in democracy’ also resonates with us because democracy is, at its heart, about giving people a voice, and our work, at its heart, is about bringing people together and telling their stories through food. Food is an entry-point, a gateway: to people’s homes, lives, and cultures; to narratives of migration, relocation, and assimilation; to the world beyond the borders of this country, to all the countries that we will never visit but can begin to discover through their cuisines.

This is especially true for women. Food is a vocabulary common to most women across cultures and nationalities, and is a powerful way of communicating across difference. Because of their historical responsibility for feeding families and communities, women are the guardians of rich food cultures the world over. And because food, as we know, brings people together, women have also historically been the linchpins of their communities, something that we often overlook or forget.

Here in London, in 2013, food is as important as ever. For the 37% of Londoners who were born outside of the UK, and I am one of them, food is a primary means of maintaining an attachment to home. One of the first things I did when I moved to London was head straight for Wood Green to find the tastes of Greece that I missed – Greek honey, feta, spanakopita. This helped me find my feet in a new place, as it does for so many migrants. The next thing I did was find a kitchen to volunteer in – because cooking was something I loved doing, and I knew it could connect me to other people.

I am just one of hundreds, possibly thousands, of migrant women who volunteer in kitchens all across London every day. We do this because we want to keep busy, because we can’t find work, because we want to give something to others, because it is a way to meet people and feel less isolated. Many, many of these women dream of doing this same work professionally, as I did, and they’d be very good at it. But you’ll hear it from them directly if you come to our event during Parliament Week, which will tell some of these stories, and give voice to some of our chefs’ ambitions and dreams for the future.

I’d like to leave you with Mazí Mas’ vision, our recipe for women in democracy. It’s quite a straightforward recipe, but it’s going to take a lot of cooks working together to make it happen.

First, we must recognize women’s all-important role in nurturing and building communities.

Second, we need to help women to bring their valuable skills into the public sphere, so they can become full and independent participants in public life.

Third, we need to encourage the proliferation of women-led businesses that are embedded within urban communities.

And finally, we must give women the tools to use their positions within families and communities to educate, organize, and lead: on health and well-being, on food waste and sustainable living, on giving marginalised groups a voice, and on responsible citizenship and inclusive democracy.