The Opportunity Cafe

Six years ago, Jane Marx had an idea to help Australia’s most vulnerable new arrivals find jobs and security. Since then, her dream project has changed countless lives. Bronwyn Phillips catches up with one of our first Women of the Future.

- Bronwyn Phillips

Back in 2013, when The Weekly launched the Women of the Future scholarship program, a bright-eyed, young idealist called Jane Marx had a dream to open a cafe with a difference. Jane’s cafe would train refugees in barista and hospitality skills, and build their confidence through paid employment. She entered our inaugural awards and won $10,000 to help make her dream a reality.

“The Australian Women’s Weekly could see something in me when others didn’t. From that point, things really started to take shape,” says now 33, the mother to three-year-old Yolandi and co-proprietor of a social enterprise hospitality business that has grown in leaps and bounds.

The initial seeds of Jane’s award-winning venture were sown way back when she was a 19-year-old student abroad in Edinburgh. There she crossed paths with her future husband, Francois, a young South African who shared her passion for coffee, community, and travel.

“Francois migrated to Australia when we were 22,” Jane recalls happily. “We moved to Melbourne and started volunteering with different organizations and working with people from refugee backgrounds.”

Francois had taught barista skills at a not-for-profit cafe, while Jane had taught English to refugee women. It was the era of the Australian government’s Operation Sovereign Borders, a military-style response to stop asylum seekers trying to reach Australia by boat. The issue was controversial and emotional, public opinion was divided and many Australians linked refugees with terrorism. Jane and Francois were shocked by the level of hostility. Through their volunteer work, they knew firsthand the challenges faced by refugees and felt a welcoming place where negative attitudes could be changed was sorely needed.