• People who come to Ireland seeking refuge and who find themselves in Tralee, Co. Kerry, are getting a kickstart as barista trainees serving ethically-produced coffee from a converted horsebox. Located on Boherbee Road, near Austin Stack GAA Stadium, the Coffee Pod is one of the most impactful social enterprises in the country.

The food truck is run by Tralee International Resource Centre and it provides training opportunities to asylum seekers and refugees such as Dariia Asieieva. With her life upended after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Dariia found that working at the Coffee Pod helped her to make a new start.

Now a business student, Dariia said that her 48 hours of training at the Coffee Pod really helped.

“It was shortly after I came to Ireland and it really helped to improve my English, to improve my communication and to integrate in Ireland,” she said.

It helped her to meet people from diverse backgrounds and many countries.

“You come and make friends, you learn how to speak to clients. The barista supervising me was Ukrainian and that made it easier for me. It’s a really interesting experience to talk with people of different nationalities, languages and cultures,” she said.

Two aims: Work and Integration

Mary Carroll is the manager of Tralee International Resource Centre and she said the Coffee Pod supports a number of other initiatives such as a drop-in centre and English classes.

“The Centre has been there for about 16 years and our whole aim is to support integration in Tralee. We support asylum seekers, refugees, whoever is in the international community, to help them build a new life in Tralee.”

She said that, as a social enterprise, the Coffee Pod has two aims.

“One – we are training people so that they can get jobs. Nearly all people want to work and sometimes the blocks are that they don’t have work experience or they don’t have training. We provide barista training, manual handling, customer service, and we give them work experience in the Coffee Pod. They see what an Irish workplace is like. Also, they can maybe get a reference from us as well, and we support them to find work.

“The second thing is that it is really good for integration; in fact it’s one of the best things we have ever done. It’s like integration in action. The local people coming to get a coffee and some food are getting served by someone from Ukraine or Sudan and there’s that interaction happening. People who might never meet someone from another country are getting a real experience and we’re finding that it has become very much like a community hub in Tralee, for international and local interaction.”

• Mary Carroll (centre – holding the Acts of Inclusion sign) with others from Tralee International Resource Centre marching in the St Patrick’s Day parade in Tralee.

Fancy Coffee in a Converted Horsebox

The Coffee Pod itself is quite a simple facility.

“It’s a horsebox basically, a real horsebox converted,” said Mary.

When it came to choosing a coffee brand, they were much fussier.

“We went for Cloudpicker coffee – it’s really only in a few places in Ireland. The company behind it has a very good ethos, they support integration and refugees. It tied in nicely. We do home-baking; at the moment a Ukrainian lady is baking for us. We wanted this to be representative of what we do, which is about integration.”

Recently a little dome area was added, so that people can sit around and talk after collecting their orders.

Since it got going there have been participants from a wide range of countries.

“There are a lot of Ukrainians, but we have had people from Sudan, Somalia, Iraq, Nigeria, Afghanistan – there has been a good mix. There has been a mix of men and women. They all get a certificate at the end which they are delighted with,” said Mary.

• A Coffee Pod trainee receives a certificate of completion in barista skills.

 

All say that it helped them

There is lots of evidence that those who complete the training benefit from it.

“Our main barista is a Ukrainian man: he did the course and he has taken over running it. So far, we have trained over 50 people and we are around two and a half years in operation. Most of them are working now. While they may not be working in the coffee sector, they all say that it helped them because it gave them a chance to practice English, which is really important. They could go to classes all day, but they learn so much from interacting with customers. And an employer likes to see a little bit of local work history,” said Mary.

Since the inception of the Coffee Pod, there has been valuable support from many quarters.

“We got great support from Kerry County Council, the Community Recognition Fund and LEADER were very good to us. North East West Kerry Development are very good to us, they help us with funding and with training. Without funding it would have been difficult to keep it going, because it is a social enterprise,” added Mary.

You can follow the Coffee Pod and keep up with Tralee International Resource Centre’s activities on social media – this is their Facebook page.