Meet The Melbourne Cafe Owners Who Are Finding Jobs For Refugees

We’ve teamed up with Heineken to introduce you to some men and women who have chosen to go beyond their borders, challenge the status quo, say ‘why not?’ instead of ‘it can’t be done’ — and as a result have made the world a more interesting place for the rest of us. For more people worth watching, head here.

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Given the amount of right-wing rhetoric circulating in Australia about refugees — by turns either lazy and entitled or stealing all our jobs, depending on which rag you’re reading — it’s easy to feel powerless about how to help or where to begin. For Melbourne husband-and-wife team Jane and Francois Marx, the answer lay in harnessing the universal power of good coffee.

After running a series of pop-up Long Street Coffee shops, the first at Melbourne’s Laneway Festival earlier this year, Jane and Francois decided the time was right to make Long Street a permanent fixture — and they’re currently running a Pozible campaign to cover their startup costs.

Hospitality veterans with over 20 years in the industry between them, the couple’s plan is for the cafe to provide concrete employment opportunities for refugees living in the community, which will in turn help erode other prospective employers’ reticence to employing refugees. The campaign closes on Christmas Eve, and they’ve already raised $18,500.

“Long Street is the best way I can think of to change people’s minds on this topic,” Jane says. Jane first began volunteering as an English teacher for refugees in 2010; her husband began teaching hospitality skills to young migrants and refugees not long after. “I live in a bit of a bubble in Melbourne,” Jane says, “but I come from a very working class background, and I know that job creation and seeing someone ‘have a go’ may just challenge the perspectives of even the most hard-line opponents of asylum seekers and refugees.”

“The pop-ups were both a business trial and a way of showing the potential of the young people we want to employ,” Francois recalls. They employed two young refugees at Laneway: Dawa, from Tibet, and Esther, from Burma. “We were so amazed at how positive everyone’s reactions were, especially at St. Jerome’s Laneway Festival. Sometimes when you read the news, you get this sinking feeling that everyone has turned their backs on people seeking refuge, but that is simply just not true. The amount of young people supporting us is so uplifting. For me, it reaffirms my belief that people want to see a change in the way asylum seekers and refugees are perceived and treated. So, yes, I believe we can go the full distance.”

Far from being a mere fluffy feel-good initiative, Jane and Francois’ plan for Long Street, other than to make really great coffee (it is Melbourne, after all), is to provide genuine, hands-on training that will improve refugees’ ‘employability’. “We want for people in the industry to know that if people have trained with us, they’re going to have the skills and confidence that will make them an asset to their business,” Jane says. “For some of our employees, a traineeship at Long Street will mean they’re able to support themselves through school or university; for others it will be a foot in the door to a career in hospitality. Either way, I hope Long Street will be that vital first step for young refugees to achieve whatever they dream of doing.”

With a few days left of their crowdfunding campaign, Jane and Francois remain optimistic about the future of their project. “We haven’t got the doors open yet, so I’m not going to pretend to be an expert on social enterprise,” Jane says. “At this point, however, starting a business that trades for a social purpose is the best way I can think of making a positive impact, and I don’t see why that can’t be replicated in many industries.”

It’s a sentiment echoed by Francois, who hopes Long Street’s efforts might be the snowflake that begins an avalanche of similar opportunities. “There are a lot of people out there who need better opportunities,” he says. “Not only refugees, but also Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders, people experiencing homelessness, women suffering from domestic violence, people with disabilities. The more opportunities that are generated and awareness raised by all social enterprises, the more people will recognise that they are able to create the kind of society they want to live in and leave behind for the next generation.”

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Visit Long Street Cafe’s fundraising campaign, ‘Brewing For Change’, on Pozible.

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Clem Bastow is a writer and critic with a focus on popular culture, gender politics, mental health, and weird internet humour. She’s on Twitter at @clembastow

All photos via Brewing For Change.