Practices that support our work: marking the moments
How do you keep going and keep momentum, when there are systemic barriers that make it difficult for people to reach their goals? During this summer Mini-Series, we reflect on a few top practices that support our work. In this final part of the series, we reflect on marking the moments.
Written by Routes’ Head of Programmes Wieke Vink, this blog shares examples of how we tune in and celebrate important occasions, big and small, from across our programme delivery and team collaboration!
It’s much more difficult to feel a sense of time, if you’ve been out of work or education for a longer period, or have only been doing so irregularly. For many women in the UK asylum system, we know this is a reality. As documented in our Routes to Employment Research, there are long waits for women in the UK asylum system - first to get the right to work, and then to be able to start a job. This leads to longer periods outside of professional environments, which can affect people’s self-esteem and makes it more difficult to prove suitability for roles as well.
Whilst we work hard on supporting people to access courses, employability support and work opportunities, we also try to support people’s sense of confidence and community through the ways we work. We do this, through making sure we integrate our values of ‘Joy, Welcome and Autonomy’ in the way we design and deliver our programmes.
There are many ways of infusing joy into our work - one of which is marking moments! This includes celebrations, but also noticing when people have a special occasion coming up, marking the start and end of programmes together and being mindful about our yearly rhythms. This excitement for communal experiences is not unique to us. Think of the crowds that came out across London for last month’s partial solar eclipse. At Routes, we pay extra attention to the passage of time, given the fact that some of the markers often more common to adult life - like national holidays or a work schedule that you can check in and out of - might not be present for everyone we work with.
“With our focus on being responsive and innovative, we often test new things as part of our delivery. That’s exciting, but also busy! It’s easy to get caught up in the pace of day-to-day work. There’s always more we could do, and the next thing we could try to organise. But in our team meetings, we also allocate time to reflect together when we’ve done something for the first time and make sure we give that a little bit of extra attention.”
A good example of this, in the words of the Routes to Employment Project Manager Jocelyn Maskrey: ‘This August, we trialled our first-ever Career Drop-In Day! More and more, we see our community members trying to find work that matches their skills, ambitions, and experiences, but struggling to know where to start or how to get there. We decided to offer 1:1 employment advisor sessions so community members could sit down and speak with someone about their CV, their career options, and the nuances of UK workplace culture.’
For the Career Drop In, Jocelyn was there to welcome participants and greet them, ahead of their sessions. ‘It was great to sit and chat with people about their goals and what they hope to achieve, and to offer a space where they could discuss them openly. As a Project Manager, it is exciting to try out new things like this, as we get to really understand what we can provide for the women in our community, and to practically support them with their employment goals.’
Marking the moments with community members
Routes team member Shunn hosting the Alumni Learning and Social, in August 2026. A chance for alumni members to come together, share their experiences and network.
This sense of conversation, communal organising and shared reflection is also present in other parts of our work, from an Alumni Learning and Social marking the first year of our programme to the Celebration Event we host after every Mentoring Programme to mark the participants’ transition into becoming a Routes alumni member.
Celebrations are usually one of the highlights of our Programmes! We also collect input from our participants, which are integrated into a Retrospective for the team, to learn from its delivery. This allows for further learning and reflection.
‘Practice what you preach’ is something you hear often, but that isn’t always easy in a working environment in which funding is scarce, community members have urgent needs to be met, and lots of organisations are short on resources.
Still, as a team too, we try to be mindful of how we model to ourselves the small ways in which we can mark moments! The Routes team shares birthday cakes on team members’ birthdays and we have optional monthly drinks. It’s these small moments that help us build the social fabric of our organisation.
Marking the moments
Shunn with a team favourite: birthday cake!
Being together is so important in people-facing work, to make sure we stay connected as a team and as a community. It gives us the chance to check in, see where support is most needed and also celebrate when there is positive news! It definitely is the joy in the day-to-day that keeps us going: from seeing the children of our participants grow up in our childcare provision across the years, to someone starting a job, receiving refugee status or another special life event.
Thanks for reading! Please find the previous entries of this mini-series on collective care and mindfulness here.
