Source: APC

04 June, 2024 – The Refuge/Utočište, social enterprise of the Asylum Protection Center (APC), employs refugees’ youth, single mothers and tries to bring these and other vulnerable groups of refugees closer to the Serbian local community. The idea of ​​APC’s Refuge/Utočište is to assist refugees’ finding a job, while also strengthening theirs’ integration within local community. For 5 years now, the Refuge/Utočište provides refugees with an opportunity to acquire knowledge, working skills, become financially independent and learn as much as possible about Serbian culture and the local environment.

Among many refugees that Refuge/Utočište assisted, few years ago our social enterprise provided also company’s training and an employment to Morteza, young refugee from Afghanistan. Morteza is APC’s long-time beneficiary. Beside assisting Morteza to find an employment at Refuge/Utočište, APC lawyers also supported Morteza in getting his asylum status’ approved.  As Morteza explains, he came to Serbia in 2017, lived in a dormitory, attended textile design’s high school and at the same time he also worked on part-time basis at APC social company, Refuge/Utočište. While sharing his experience of engaging at Refuge, Morteza said that all staff at APC social company accepted him as a friend and good colleague. He was extremely grateful for getting an opportunity to be a part of team and for receiving support at Refuge/Utočište. At Utočište, he made new acquaintances, learned more about the local environment and earned salary, that helped him with his living expenses. Meanwhile, Morteza graduated also from his high school. Taught by his good experience at APC, Morteza now says that he wants to help other people same way, as once when he was getting a help from Utočište/Refuge’s colleagues. Morteza sees his life in Serbia and he is aware that it important to invest in himself. Morteza wants to be one’s own man. We at APC are proud, that we got an opportunity to help Morteza to complete his high school and pave the way for his new successes that are yet to come.

Utočište/Refuge represents our APC’s long-standing social initiative of providing vocational trainings and an employment to the vulnerable groups. Through aforementioned initiative, we aim to help vulnerable refugees to achieve their financial independence and integration within Serbian society. At first in 2019, APC opened an oriental food bakery inside the YU Business Center mall. Soon after, later grew into a small restaurant and then also transformed into a pastry shop. As the Serbian national standard of living has significantly declined in the recent years, due to the inflation and various other difficulties, we focused in producing smaller number of pastries that include among other handcrafted cannoli deserts, for which we became well-known in Belgrade city. However, Utočište/Refuge retained its organizational and technical capacities for producing various food and baked goods. We are always ready to continue with food production for refugees in case of unforeseen circumstances or new humanitarian crises. APC has established a business model, that allows Utočište/Refuge to survive all these years now, adapt to various situations and conducting variety of on-jobs training for refugees.

Ever since Utočište started with its work, we have been providing trainings to refugees in the areas of organization, sales, production, online marketing, and other activities, so that refugees can acquire new job skills, find an employment more easily, and even start thinking about opening their own small businesses. Accumulated experience and knowledge that we gained at Utočište/Refuge, we plan to further organize and share with refugees. We plan to open business incubator, that would even more assist refugees with establishing and running of their own refugees small businesses. Currently, we organize pastries’ production, provide business catering, organize online sales, sponsor advertisements to reach out to a wider local community and we also aim to strengthen cooperation with local companies to further integrate later into our products’ value chain. It is an idea that through work of Utočište/Refuge and business incubator, we help refugees and local community to get acquainted with different cultures and history and simultaneously strengthen Serbian local economy through further employment and the creation or strengthening of existing small businesses.

Our focus is on preparing high-quality pastries, but we are also open to other activities in the future. Variety of our social bakery’s pastries, includes exquisite handcrafted desserts, that combine influences of Arab, Sephardic, Norman, and Byzantine cuisines. This blend of flavors, ingredients, and colors symbolizes the cultures of the Middle East and Europe. Our Utočište/Refuge’s current offerings include among other, handcrafted crispy cannoli, tarts, and Sicilian pastries. Vegan biancomangiare and gluten-free caprese tart desserts, can satisfy almost anyone’s taste. Our idea at APC is to continue with developing our social business, learning about each other through pastries’ preparation and in the same time helping refugees. To be more accessible to all interested visitors, we have opened bakery at New Belgrade district inside the YUBC Center and also at the old part of Belgrade, Vračar’s municipality. APC invites all people of goodwill, organizations, and companies to visit our Utočište/Refuge social bakery. Become part of our successful story and support us in helping refugees and contributing to the development of our society!