By Martin Corasinsky Campos | Managing Director | Breadwinners
Founded in 2016, Breadwinners is a UK-based charity dedicated to empowering young refugees on their journey to employment by selling organic baked goods at farmers markets across London and Brighton, and wholesale to corporate clients and cafes.
Recognising that many struggle to find work, Breadwinners delivers three employability programmes, providing crucial first jobs, work experience, training, and mentoring at their market stalls and through their wholesale service; they money generated from bread sales at their market stalls and through a wholesale service helps to pay the wages of the young people, creating more employment opportunities.
In this article, I’ll guide you through our latest Participatory Action Research (PAR) and share our insights and impact from our work with young refugees in London and Brighton.
Our mission at Breadwinners is to empower young refugees on their journey to employment. A core part of that mission is our commitment to listening to their voices and letting them lead the way. This is why Participatory Action Research, our method that involves young refugees in designing and conducting research, is so vital to us. We believe that the young people we work with are best placed to shape the organisation’s design and direction, and this approach values their lived experience above all else.
For years, we relied on traditional phone interviews for our essential impact reports. While these were valuable, there were some issues. Many calls went unanswered or to voicemail, and the feedback we did receive often lacked the depth needed to truly understand our participants’ experiences. We knew there was a significant portion of our community whose voices were not being heard.
This is where innovation and a human centered approach to technology came in. Last year, we began our partnership with Earlybird: our goal was to find a solution that could complement our human-led outreach and make it easier for participants to share their experiences in a way that felt flexible, accessible, and free from pressure. Now in its second year, the collaboration has been nothing short of revolutionary. Using their conversational AI voice technology, we have been able to get more, richer insights and enhance our data collection. This partnership has transformed how we engage with our community of young service users and mentors.
Here’s a look at the impact:
- Increased Reach and Responses: We reached people we couldn’t connect with before, seeing a 48% increase in total responses, bringing valuable, unheard opinions to light. In our 2024-25 report, our peer-led PAR & Environmental Impact project reached over 900 community members.
- Richer, More Actionable Insights: The AI agent allows for open-ended questions, which, combined with its voice and multi-lingual capabilities, has 12 MARTIN CORASINSKY CAMPOS Managing Director Breadwinners Martin is a dedicated leader in social enterprise and charity, serving as the Managing Director of Breadwinners – a not-for-profit that sells organic bread and supports young refugees to integrate in the UK by accessing work, training and mentoring. He is the Chairman of Argentina FC and has held board positions at Social Innovation Exchange and Praxis. Martin did a career change from corporates the likes of GSK and Lindt&Spruengli, prompted by his experience as a volunteer with RefugeeYouth. He led WASH implementation in rural Nicaragua, is based in London, and is a Fellow of the School for Social Entrepreneurs and On Purpose leadership programme. 34 helped us gather deeper and more nuanced feedback. This is especially important for participants where English is not their native language. This rich, qualitative data provides invaluable perspectives that directly inform how we refine and improve our programmes. One example is our first Creative Youth Voices Project. After discovering that 89% of young people would like Breadwinners to do more to explore and respond to the challenges that young refugees face, we launched an audio-visual exhibition during Refugee Week 2025, highlighting the positive contributions young refugees give to our communities.
- Empowering Young Researchers: Our young researchers are directly involved in the PAR project, from designing the questions to analysing the data. Working with Earlybird has exposed them to cutting-edge technology, equipping them with valuable experience in modern workflows and enhancing their digital literacy and employability skills. As one of our young researchers, Goitom, said, “Working as a PAR gave me exposure to diverse skill sets and tools”.
- High User Satisfaction: The flexibility of the platform is a key reason for its success. Participants can respond at their own convenience and in their preferred language. An impressive 91% of participants rated the tool as excellent or good. Users particularly appreciated the ability to share their insights at their own pace without feeling pressured or judged.
This multi-year partnership with Earlybird shows how technology, when applied thoughtfully and with a human centered design, can amplify human connection and insight rather than diminish it. It demonstrates a clear path for charities to collect richer, more authentic data, which in turn leads to stronger programmes and better support for the communities they serve. In December 2024, Breadwinners won the ‘Prove It: Social Impact’ award from Social Enterprise UK, and the partnership was a key driver. Being highly commended at the PwC UK Building Trust Awards 2024 for our “Impact in Social Enterprise” is also a testament to the strength of our community-powered model.
I am incredibly proud to be at the forefront of driving social impact through AI-powered insights and showing what’s possible when purpose, people, and perseverance align.
WHAT BREADWINNERS LEARNED FROM OUR YOUNG RESEARCHERS
This year’s Participatory Action Research project was led by a team of 21 young people and three former mentors. This vital information has, and will continue to inform future programme design.
The team of young researchers reached more young people than ever before, sending 928 messages and making 344 calls. In total, the project reached over 900 members.
The research highlighted the significant impact of the Breadwinners programme on participants:
- 95% of young people who responded stated that Breadwinners influenced their career or life plans.
- 92% report a significant increase in wellbeing after taking part in a programme.
- 96% of Breadwinners participants have progressed into further work, university or volunteering after graduating.
- 64% of young people said the biggest impact was improved confidence, with 43% mentioning an improvement in their practical skills.
- 29% said the programme helped them clarify or even change their career direction.
We also learnt that:
- 37% said lack of job opportunities is their biggest challenge facing them, followed by lack of confidence, legal or right-to-work barriers and uncertainty about career direction.
- 89% of young people and 85% of mentors said we should do more to explore and respond to the challenges facing young refugees.
Based on these findings, the PAR team proposed several changes to improve and maximise opportunities for progression and explore the challenges refugees faced. Some of their ideas showcasing the positive contributions of young refugees to our communities, referrals for entry level jobs, sharing job opportunities via a newsletter, and working on corporate partnerships. The team also suggested improving communications before and after programmes, such as having regular updates from mentors and sharing a monthly update on WhatsApp or the website.
It’s been amazing working with Earlybird to improve and refine our PAR: we were able to reach more people, improve our engagement and develop much richer insights compared to phone calls alone.
We’ll continue to learn from our participants and young researchers to improve the work we do every year. If you’re thinking of running your own Participatory Action Research project, I’d be happy to help you.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
MARTIN CORASINSKY CAMPOS | Managing Director | Breadwinners
Martin is a dedicated leader in social enterprise and charity, serving as the Managing Director of Breadwinners – a not-for-profit that sells organic bread and supports young refugees to integrate in the UK by accessing work, training and mentoring. He is the Chairman of Argentina FC and has held board positions at Social Innovation Exchange and Praxis.
Martin did a career change from corporates the likes of GSK and Lindt&Spruengli, prompted by his experience as a volunteer with RefugeeYouth. He led WASH implementation in rural Nicaragua, is based in London, and is a Fellow of the School for Social Entrepreneurs and On Purpose leadership programme.