Job and Home for Lastavice
Economic empowerement of women refugees

The catering company Lastavica provides regular monthly income for seven, mainly refugee families. They no longer need additional assistance. They earn their living with their own efforts and work. The story of how the catering service Lastavica was established is unusual…

The first big commission that Lastavice had was 6 years ago when they were asked to prepare a cocktail party for 250 participants of Belgrade female organizations network. The successfully completed assignment brought about many lessons learned and ideas. The beneficiaries comprised many excellent and skilled cooks, but soon it became clear that preparing meals for the family is not the same as to organize a cocktail party for a larger number of people. For this reason, the first step Lastavice took was to organize a three-month-long training for the group of 13 interested women, who perfected their culinary skills with the help of a professional caterer. Apart from the three-month-long training, the women had the opportunity to gain basic knowledge and practice by working in the kitchen of the Hyatt hotel and the residence of the American ambassador.

This training led to the publishing of the first Lastavica cookbook with recipes that the women used for preparing food, which has so far extended to the number of 100 standardized recipes. In the beginning, they were hired mostly by the non-government sector. They engaged a professional that dealt with the improvement in the organization of the future catering service. Step by step, they improved the menu, food arrangement, conditions of work…

Seeing that the activity initiated within a humanitarian organization could expand into a business that would considerably empower economically a group of 6-7 women, three years ago they prepared a detailed business plan, consulted a few small businesses similar to what they were doing, reconsidered their strengths and weaknesses and decided in favour of establishing an enterprise within which the catering service is functioning today.

Finding adequate space that catering could cover financially, the satisfaction and discontent with changes that occurred of women included in the catering business, numerous legal and financial requirements that had to be met are just some of the problems that this diligent group of women faced… The first few months of registration were very difficult and demanding, a lot of energy and knowledge was invested so that the catering could keep on functioning in the new conditions.

Lastavica is a non-government, socio-humanitarian organization established in 1996, as a partner project of the British humanitarian organization OXFAM and the non-government organization Autonomous Women's Center from Belgrade. Originally, Lastavica was established in order to provide residence for women refugees who lived alone, without family, and in time programs for education, economic empowerment and psycho-social support were developed for all marginalized groups from Surčin, Pančevo and surrounding areas. During the 10 years of existence, Lastavica has had several thousand beneficiaries of various types of services: training (courses in computers and the English language, active job searching skills, weaving, sewing, patchwork, culinary school…); economic empowerement programs (pickling, weaving workshop, catering service,…); programs of support for the elderly; legal and psycho-social support.