What is the Experts by Experience Employment Initiative?

EBE-Employment is an initiative to promote equitable recruitment of experts by experience. We believe that people with lived experience of the UK immigration and asylum system have the best insights to lead conversations, service design, campaigns, policy initiatives, and the charitable sector should work more ‘with’ people and less ‘for’ and ‘to’ people who are refugees and migrants. Providing practical employment support and involving people with lived experience in the workforce is an essential step to achieving this goal.

This initiative works to establish a movement of charitable organisations, salaried staff, volunteers and experts by experience in the UK migrant and refugee sector who together create pathways to lived experience leadership. Our aims are:

1. to establish a network of organisations in the migration and asylum sector that work collaboratively to support experts by experience in their job applications to the organisations that are members of this network. We ask member organisations in this network to commit to follow good practice in inclusive employment when they advertise and recruit for their paid roles. 
2. to mobilise volunteer mentors who provide support for experts by experience in their job applications. We welcome staff from member organisations and other experienced individuals in the sector to volunteer their time and expertise 
3. to work meaningfully with experts by experience applicants to fine-tune our guidance, good practice tips and advice for organisations and experts by experience

Our vision and mission

• Our vision is a migration and asylum sector that is led by experts by experience of the asylum and immigration system
• Our mission is to create representation of people with lived experience of the asylum/migration at all levels of organisations and across different roles and departments

What do we want to achieve?

• More experts by experience will be successful in their applications and enter the sector in paid roles. 
• Staff with lived experience will progress their careers by moving into new roles and leadership positions.
• Sector organisations will have inclusive recruitment processes, sharing knowledge, good practice and standardising approaches across organisations.

This initiative is part of a peer innovation challenge project that we do as part of the Clore Social Leadership training programme.

Contact us at info@ebeemployment.org.uk