After Bourke Street Bakery founder Paul Allam travelled to a small village on the Thai-Burma border to set up a bakery that local villagers could run, he knew he wanted to do something similar here in Australia.
Using his recipes and knowledge from Bourke Street Bakery, Allam & Co-Founder David McGuinness launched The Bread & Butter Project, Australia’s first social enterprise bakery, in the heart of Sydney.
The purpose of the Bread and Butter Project is to give newly arrived refugees an opportunity to start their lives in Australia. The organisation not only trains and supports refugees and asylum seekers to create a career in baking, but is a large-scale commercial bakery supplying hundreds of customers across Sydney.
We speak to CEO, Eva Rabanal about the challenges the organisation has faced, and what they’ve done to overcome them.