“I learned how to bake from my brother,” John shared when we visited his bakery in Nairobi, Kenya. “I started this work 25 years ago; even before I came to Kenya, when I was a refugee in Tanzania, I was doing this work,” John shared. In his home country, John’s older brother, Peter* frequently brought him along when he went to work as a baker. Peter encouraged John to learn the skill. “He told me, ‘I will not pay you anything, but if you learn this work, you will see its benefit when you start your own business.’ When he said that, I continued to learn until I knew how to do it,” John explained.
In 2022, John secured a business grant from RefugePoint, which he used to launch his bakery business. Because renting a store would have been costly, he decided to set up his business in a makeshift structure in a local school. Using only bricks and an old oil drum, he constructed an oven in the corner of the structure, built shelves for airing bread and pastries, and bought trays and furniture for the bakery.
“I thank the almighty God because RefugePoint gave me money to start this job,” John said. “I had wanted to open a barber shop because I felt that this job required a lot of money, but later, when I went to RefugePoint, they told me I could do it,” John explained. “My wife also told me to stop the barber shop so we could return to the bakery business.”
John runs the business with his wife and employs two other refugees to support the daily operations. Each morning, John and his wife go to the shop to prepare bread and other pastries based on the daily orders. One of his clients has placed a daily order of bread, which he supplies in retail shops, and pays John at the end of each day.
Through this business, John has been able to sustain his family’s needs and pay for his children’s education. “When I started doing this work, my life improved. Even now, my children do not lack food because everything I do depends on this work, which is why I can say that this work has helped me,” John explained.
Although John was born in a refugee camp and spent most of his life in a camp, he is determined to lead a different life for his family. With eight children and a wife to care for, he believes that hard work enables you to live well with your family. “What can make my heart happy is to be proud of my work. This is the most important thing because I don’t know if I can feel happy without work. What causes me to feel happy in my heart is my family; it makes me very happy when I see them next to me. This work is very important to me because it helps me to meet my responsibilities to my family so that they can live well,” John shared. John hopes to expand his business so that he can continue to provide for his family.
John is one of the great testimonies of the value of empowering refugees to build better futures for themselves and their families through self-reliance. “I am proud of my bakery business,” John said. “…and I am proud to be more than a refugee because this work helps me sustain my family.”