Enterprise fills gap to help migrants get started
A cleaning business helps migrants into employment when they find it hard to get that first job through lack of references. Marta Steeman reports.
Silvana Santos has launched a business to help migrants get a foot on the employment ladder and earn references.
Chilean-born Santos decided, after losing employment in hospitality during Covid-19 lockdowns, that setting up her own cleaning business in Wellington and hiring migrants would meet her aspirations of starting a socially-minded enterprise.
A friend suggested she start a business that she could get into straight away and employ people she wanted to help.
‘‘So I thought, well, I have to create a new job opportunity for myself, I want to do something creative, I want to help people, so I thought ‘ok I’m going to teach people how to clean properly to give top-quality service and I will employ people that are coming in as migrants’.’’
Two months ago, Ecoanimous Cleaning was born, offering services in several suburbs, with her marketing her company and services on Facebook, through friends and on community noticeboards.
‘‘References are a thing here in New Zealand. I’m a foreigner myself, so I understand. It can get a little bit tricky sometimes even if you bring some skills and you are keen to do things, sometimes the people don’t know you and unfortunately you don’t get that first opportunity.’’
Community has been hugely important in her life.
Before Covid she had started volunteering with the Red Cross to help refugee families settle in the capital.
The sorts of things she did included helping them to enrol and attend their first appointment with a general practitioner, set up accounts with a bank, accompanying them to their first appointment at Work and Income and introducing them to their communities, because most did not speak English.
She also noticed that while Immigration New Zealand provided these families with houses to rent, the families might want to find something else but needed a reference for that and to find work.
The number of cleaning clients has been rising steadily, enough for her to take on Katerine Cortez from Peru, who arrived in Wellington recently. She is a trained physiotherapist who had been working in a hospital in Peru with cancer patients.
‘‘I decided to hire her. She’s amazing. She’s really experienced and it’s been really good. For her it’s a big thing to be working the first month.’’
Her focus is now to build up her client base to give the same chance to other migrants.
‘‘For me it’s important to
build the culture of my company, so they understand that what we do is just a little bit more than cleaning.
‘‘I want them to get involved and to make things beautiful. I believe in energy. So when you have a beautiful home, it’s nice and tidy, it’s balanced and you can come back home and you feel in harmony.
‘‘At the same time the clients help us to provide jobs for people that are in need of that. It’s like a kind of community.’’
Santos left Chile 10 years ago to explore the world. ‘‘I wanted to basically experience different things, learn new languages, properly I mean. So I’ve been involved in community projects. I like human beings.’’
New Zealand is her adopted home. She and her partner and daughter have lived here for four years after travelling in Asia and the United Kingdom.
‘‘We found an amazing community of people, super
diverse backgrounds, everybody is amazing, and we love it.’’
In Wellington, the Latin community was quite substantial and included a lot of people from Chile. Many had come here through New Zealand offering working holiday visas and had skills enough to stay on.
She has a great desire for her business to become a social enterprise, ‘‘a business for good’’.
‘‘References are a thing here in New Zealand. I’m a foreigner myself, so I understand.’’ Silvana Santos