Advertising helps fund Big Issue’s mission to end poverty
Employment

Changemakers: Mursal Hedayat's Chatterbox is transforming refugee employment

Chatterbox connects underutilised talent with the growing demand for language skills

This week’s Changemakers Top 100 special edition features the world’s leading thinkers, shakers and agitators. Throughout the week we’ll be highlighting just a few online.

Hedayat came to the UK from Afghanistan as a refugee in 1994. Her mother, a civil engineer fluent in four languages, struggled to find work in her field after obtaining refugee status.

Hers is not a unique problem. A Deloitte report from 2017 found 38 per cent of Syrian refugees in Britain had a university education, yet the refugee unemployment rate sits at around 70 per cent. Hedayat set up Chatterbox, an organisation connecting underutilised talent with a growing demand for language skills by training and employing displaced people to teach their native language using an online platform, transforming their employment prospects.

wearechatterbox.org

Read the full article in this week's Big Issue.
Find your vendor
Meet our 2026 Changemakers!

Image: YouTube/Chatterbox

Advertising helps fund Big Issue’s mission to end poverty

HELP VENDORS KEEP WORKING THROUGH THE COLD

For £36.99, help a vendor stay warm, earn an extra £520, and build a better future.
Grant, vendor

Recommended for you

View all
Grand Theft Auto workers sacked in ‘union-busting’ move: 'I don’t know how I’ll pay my bills'
Protests outside Rockstar Games' parent company Take Two Interactive's London headquarters
Employment

Grand Theft Auto workers sacked in ‘union-busting’ move: 'I don’t know how I’ll pay my bills'

Can apprenticeships fix the housing crisis? ‘I worked in childcare, now I fix social homes’
apprentices at PfP Thrive
Housing

Can apprenticeships fix the housing crisis? ‘I worked in childcare, now I fix social homes’

Access to Work delays double in four years leaving disabled people at risk of losing jobs
A miniature figurine businessman looking down on an information booklet for department for work and pensions
benefits

Access to Work delays double in four years leaving disabled people at risk of losing jobs

It's early January and FTSE 100 CEOs have already earned more than an average worker's yearly pay
Stock photo of UK bank notes and coins
Wages

It's early January and FTSE 100 CEOs have already earned more than an average worker's yearly pay