Come and Savor Coffee Made by Immigrant Women
(Published March 05, 2012)

[(5) Job creation! Looking at community enterprises] Multicultural Café Wee in Seongnam City

◇ Cresilda, an immigrant woman working in Café Wee, making a café latte ⓒ G-News Plus

The multicultural Café Wee, which is operated by immigrant women, opened in Seongnam City, Gyeonggi Province.

Seongnam City designated Café Wee as “the neighborhood business of the month” in April in connection with ongoing efforts to help immigrant women settle into the local community and achieve economic independence.

Café Wee was opened in Seohyeon-dong of Bundang-gu, Seongnam City, in December.

The café, operated by five immigrant women from the Philippines, China, and Cambodia, offers diverse drinks and snacks including Americanos, café lattes, waffles, cookies, fresh fruit smoothies and cakes.

While these ladies work at their café, their children attend a multicultural family center after school and study with teachers there until their moms finish the day’s work.

Seongnam City helped the five migrant women with barista and service-related education before they opened for business. The city will provide them with business operation expenses amounting to KRW 80 million for two years, plus consulting.

The women attended a 4-month educational program that included skills exercises, coaching by renowned baristas, customer service etiquette, on-site experience in well-known coffee shops, and a course designed to improve their Korean language pronunciation.

One of the women, Sreymatt (22), said, “Nothing looked familiar to me when I first arrived in Korea. I had a very hard time. Now I am very happy to be running this coffee shop along with the others. My husband and my family back in Cambodia are happy that I have a job. I hope to run a similar business later in my home country. It is good to meet nice people through coffee and have a dream.”

Café Wee will continuously support other migrant women’s efforts to stand on their own economically by providing them with jobs and donating part of the proceeds to multicultural households in difficult circumstances.

ⓒ G-News Plus News / Hong Ji-ye / jyangel@kg21.net

http://gnews.gg.go.kr/news/news_detail.asp?number=201203051618557055C048&s_code=C048