Partner Profiles is an interview series that spotlights Block’s community partners — both organizations and individuals — and the work they do to increase access to the economy.
In this installment of the series, we talk with Hannah Brennan, cofounder and CEO of Scarf, a community organization offering hospitality job training to young refugees and migrants in Australia.
Back in 2010, Hannah Brennan and Jess Moran — two friends and coworkers in Melbourne’s hospitality industry — began working to reduce barriers preventing young refugees and migrants from gaining employment in Australia. While there were jobs to be filled, especially in the hospitality and service industries, roadblocks like hiring discrimination, limited knowledge of employment pathways, and lack of local experience and references kept many in the refugee community from landing work in their new home country. Frustrated by the disconnect, Hannah and Jess launched Scarf — a crash course, of sorts, designed to help newly arrived young people navigate and succeed in Australia’s hospitality industry.
In the nearly 14 years since, Scarf has supported close to 350 young people in their journey to gain knowledge, skills, confidence, and networks. They’ve accomplished this through hands-on hospitality training, mentoring, and paid work experience programs. Scarf graduates become part of a supportive new community — and around three-quarters of them land jobs within six months.
For this interview we talked with Hannah, Scarf’s cofounder and current CEO, to learn more about Scarf’s history, who the program helps, and how inclusive training and mentoring can break down barriers to the economy.
Hannah Brennan, co founder and CEO of Scarf.
In your words, what is Scarf’s mission?
We exist to create a safe and supportive space for young people seeking asylum, and those from refugee and migrant backgrounds, to learn, make mistakes, be mentored, and begin their working lives in Australia. A big aim for us is to make the [hospitality] industry more equitable and accessible to potential employees. And, ideally, not just the cohorts we work with directly, but more broadly for all young people from migrant, refugee, and asylum-seeking backgrounds so that they're not locked out of jobs.
How did Scarf start?
It started just over 14 years ago. I was in my mid-twenties at the time. I’d been working in hospitality for a few years, and I met Scarf’s other cofounder, Jess Moran, when we were working at a restaurant together. We both had a bit of an interest in giving back to the community and we started doing some volunteer work and meeting with young people from refugee backgrounds. And we found that we were hearing this really similar story: these young people wanted to be working, but no one would give them a shot. They couldn’t get an interview.
So [Jess and I] felt this growing frustration, because we loved the hospitality industry — for us, people born in Australia with some experience working at a cafe or restaurant, it often felt like a very supportive and accessible space. But we were meeting these great people who wanted work but just couldn’t get a job. Meanwhile, Jess and I were working at an events space that was desperate for staff. There was this disconnect.
I look back now and think, we were so young and naive. We really didn’t grasp how huge these barriers to work were for these young people. We came at it with this sort of simplistic lens of, “There's a job here, there’s a person here, but the person is locked out of it. That's not fair and we want to change that.”
A group of Scarf program graduates.
Did you and Jess have much experience in community development at that point?
We didn’t. But I think that’s one of the strengths of Scarf, that there was a lot we didn’t know and we were really hopeful that we could change the status quo. And I speak for myself now — Jess will always be a cofounder of Scarf, but she stepped out of the organization in about the third year and moved on to study and other work in the community sector — I’m still learning. I’m still figuring out what good community development looks like, and I don’t call myself a professional in that sense. I’m a hospitality professional. But there are a lot of amazing and experienced people who have really helped the program develop over the years and get better and better.
These days the program is run by a small but mighty team of professionals who are smart, creative, and experienced, but we still welcome input from mentors, supervisors, board members, and beyond. And we have input from Graduate Voice, a group which is made up of young people who’ve gone through our program, and who advise us on how to make Scarf as practical, culturally safe, and valuable as possible for future trainees.
Scarf participants take part in realistic simulations of hospitality experiences.
Can you walk me through how the Scarf program works for participants?
We ran our pilot program back in 2010 with eight trainees. And basically, neither Jess or I have an education background. But we know hospitality. So we thought, okay, what are the key things someone would need to know to be able to walk into a cafe or restaurant and hit the ground running? We realized the training didn’t need to be in depth — trainees didn’t need to be experts on wine or coffee, but they did need to know how to properly pour a glass of wine and make a decent espresso coffee. So we basically just came up with a program and said, okay, we’ll meet once a week and train for a few hours. And at the end of each weekly training session, we ran a dinner service in a friend’s restaurant that was closed — a lot of the customers were friends and family, and we had some donated stock from a friend who worked at a wine company or a local coffee roaster. Some of our really good friends that we’d made in hospitality came on board as mentors — pairing a trainee with a mentor has always been key in the program. The mentor is someone who’s worked in hospitality for at least five years. They’re passionate about it and ready to share their skills to really help build a young person’s confidence just through walking alongside them as they train and as they serve real customers, which can be quite intimidating in the beginning. One of our graduates once described their mentor as “a friendly shadow.”
That pilot program was by no means perfect. We’ve done a lot of evaluation work and the program has evolved so much since then, and I think it just gets better every year. We’re constantly asking trainees for feedback and gathering evidence of what’s working well, what could be better. And I think that’s another strength. We’re like, the program is good, better than good, but it could always be better.
How does Square play into your training?
When we go to a partner venue to run a Scarf event, we need to set up our own mini restaurant within that space. And we want to make the simulation as realistic as possible for the trainees. So the trainees learn how to use Square tools, and then during our events they actually use the products during service to input orders and take payments from diners. It’s important that our graduates come out of the program knowing how to use the technology they are going to be working with in future hospitality jobs.
What was Scarf’s initial purpose, and how did it evolve?
In the early days it was very much about training and jobs. We didn’t really understand the part we played in creating a safe space for people who were new to Australia, who often had things going on in their lives that you can’t see just by looking at them. Things that created almost insurmountable barriers to employment.
We have incredible trainers and mentors and we have a really specific way of inducting people, working within a trauma-informed framework, and making sure the program is a very welcoming space. As much as Scarf is about hospitality and learning and work, I would say it’s equally about community, connection, and creating friendships. It’s about being a really integral part of someone’s life as they’re settling into a new country.
Partner Profiles is an interview series that spotlights Block’s community partners — both organizations and individuals — and the work they do to increase access to the economy.
In this installment of the series, we talk with Hannah Brennan, cofounder and CEO of Scarf, a community organization offering hospitality job training to young refugees and migrants in Australia.
Back in 2010, Hannah Brennan and Jess Moran — two friends and coworkers in Melbourne’s hospitality industry — began working to reduce barriers preventing young refugees and migrants from gaining employment in Australia. While there were jobs to be filled, especially in the hospitality and service industries, roadblocks like hiring discrimination, limited knowledge of employment pathways, and lack of local experience and references kept many in the refugee community from landing work in their new home country. Frustrated by the disconnect, Hannah and Jess launched Scarf — a crash course, of sorts, designed to help newly arrived young people navigate and succeed in Australia’s hospitality industry.
In the nearly 14 years since, Scarf has supported close to 350 young people in their journey to gain knowledge, skills, confidence, and networks. They’ve accomplished this through hands-on hospitality training, mentoring, and paid work experience programs. Scarf graduates become part of a supportive new community — and around three-quarters of them land jobs within six months.
For this interview we talked with Hannah, Scarf’s cofounder and current CEO, to learn more about Scarf’s history, who the program helps, and how inclusive training and mentoring can break down barriers to the economy.
Hannah Brennan, co founder and CEO of Scarf.
In your words, what is Scarf’s mission?
We exist to create a safe and supportive space for young people seeking asylum, and those from refugee and migrant backgrounds, to learn, make mistakes, be mentored, and begin their working lives in Australia. A big aim for us is to make the [hospitality] industry more equitable and accessible to potential employees. And, ideally, not just the cohorts we work with directly, but more broadly for all young people from migrant, refugee, and asylum-seeking backgrounds so that they're not locked out of jobs.
How did Scarf start?
It started just over 14 years ago. I was in my mid-twenties at the time. I’d been working in hospitality for a few years, and I met Scarf’s other cofounder, Jess Moran, when we were working at a restaurant together. We both had a bit of an interest in giving back to the community and we started doing some volunteer work and meeting with young people from refugee backgrounds. And we found that we were hearing this really similar story: these young people wanted to be working, but no one would give them a shot. They couldn’t get an interview.
So [Jess and I] felt this growing frustration, because we loved the hospitality industry — for us, people born in Australia with some experience working at a cafe or restaurant, it often felt like a very supportive and accessible space. But we were meeting these great people who wanted work but just couldn’t get a job. Meanwhile, Jess and I were working at an events space that was desperate for staff. There was this disconnect.
I look back now and think, we were so young and naive. We really didn’t grasp how huge these barriers to work were for these young people. We came at it with this sort of simplistic lens of, “There's a job here, there’s a person here, but the person is locked out of it. That's not fair and we want to change that.”
A group of Scarf program graduates.
Did you and Jess have much experience in community development at that point?
We didn’t. But I think that’s one of the strengths of Scarf, that there was a lot we didn’t know and we were really hopeful that we could change the status quo. And I speak for myself now — Jess will always be a cofounder of Scarf, but she stepped out of the organization in about the third year and moved on to study and other work in the community sector — I’m still learning. I’m still figuring out what good community development looks like, and I don’t call myself a professional in that sense. I’m a hospitality professional. But there are a lot of amazing and experienced people who have really helped the program develop over the years and get better and better.
These days the program is run by a small but mighty team of professionals who are smart, creative, and experienced, but we still welcome input from mentors, supervisors, board members, and beyond. And we have input from Graduate Voice, a group which is made up of young people who’ve gone through our program, and who advise us on how to make Scarf as practical, culturally safe, and valuable as possible for future trainees.
Scarf participants take part in realistic simulations of hospitality experiences.
Can you walk me through how the Scarf program works for participants?
We ran our pilot program back in 2010 with eight trainees. And basically, neither Jess or I have an education background. But we know hospitality. So we thought, okay, what are the key things someone would need to know to be able to walk into a cafe or restaurant and hit the ground running? We realized the training didn’t need to be in depth — trainees didn’t need to be experts on wine or coffee, but they did need to know how to properly pour a glass of wine and make a decent espresso coffee. So we basically just came up with a program and said, okay, we’ll meet once a week and train for a few hours. And at the end of each weekly training session, we ran a dinner service in a friend’s restaurant that was closed — a lot of the customers were friends and family, and we had some donated stock from a friend who worked at a wine company or a local coffee roaster. Some of our really good friends that we’d made in hospitality came on board as mentors — pairing a trainee with a mentor has always been key in the program. The mentor is someone who’s worked in hospitality for at least five years. They’re passionate about it and ready to share their skills to really help build a young person’s confidence just through walking alongside them as they train and as they serve real customers, which can be quite intimidating in the beginning. One of our graduates once described their mentor as “a friendly shadow.”
That pilot program was by no means perfect. We’ve done a lot of evaluation work and the program has evolved so much since then, and I think it just gets better every year. We’re constantly asking trainees for feedback and gathering evidence of what’s working well, what could be better. And I think that’s another strength. We’re like, the program is good, better than good, but it could always be better.
How does Square play into your training?
When we go to a partner venue to run a Scarf event, we need to set up our own mini restaurant within that space. And we want to make the simulation as realistic as possible for the trainees. So the trainees learn how to use Square tools, and then during our events they actually use the products during service to input orders and take payments from diners. It’s important that our graduates come out of the program knowing how to use the technology they are going to be working with in future hospitality jobs.
What was Scarf’s initial purpose, and how did it evolve?
In the early days it was very much about training and jobs. We didn’t really understand the part we played in creating a safe space for people who were new to Australia, who often had things going on in their lives that you can’t see just by looking at them. Things that created almost insurmountable barriers to employment.
We have incredible trainers and mentors and we have a really specific way of inducting people, working within a trauma-informed framework, and making sure the program is a very welcoming space. As much as Scarf is about hospitality and learning and work, I would say it’s equally about community, connection, and creating friendships. It’s about being a really integral part of someone’s life as they’re settling into a new country.