Community Voice: Change comes from within – Meet Sylvana

I’m Sylvana, bi-racial, born and raised in Holland, entrepreneur and mother of a handsome 10-year-old boy. 

Early years 

I left school at age 16 due to personal circumstances. Since then, I’ve had a wide range of jobs in the travel industry, hospitality and property industry. At 23, I moved to Spain after having worked as a hostess for a Dutch touring car company on trips from Holland to Spain for a few years. This wasn’t a random decision; I was in a bad place and really needed a change of environment. I still think that this was the best decision I could have made at that time. It really changed everything. 

I started off with simple hospitality jobs in bars and restaurants in popular tourist areas but after having done that for a few years, I decided that it was time to start looking for more serious jobs. With my broken Spanish and limited experience in these types of jobs, I managed to convince the managing director of a 4-star hotel in Benidorm to hire me as a receptionist. I really enjoyed my 2 and a half years there, being able to perfect my Spanish and use my Dutch and English as well. 

I then got offered a job in an accountancy office that wanted to expand into the Dutch and English markets and was interested in me because of my languages. Again, with limited experience, I managed to learn everything from bookkeeping to payroll on the job. For many years I had felt ‘stupid’ because I never completed any higher education. In those times the jobs that you could apply for were usually linked to your degree or lack thereof. But I realised that this wasn’t always true and that I could do so much more if I just put my mind to it. This realisation boosted my confidence and ambitions in many ways. 

But then it was 2008 and the recession hit. It hit Spain particularly hard. While working in the hotel, I had met my now ex-husband and in 2008 I found out that I was pregnant. Even though I had a stable job in accountancy, my ex struggled to find a decent job due to his lack of Spanish. We decided to move to Holland with my family so I would have more support with the baby. For many reasons, this didn’t work out so after just a year there we moved to London. This is now 10 years ago. 

Moving to London 

My time in London started off as stay-at-home mum. But having an entrepreneurial spirit, I got depressed, really depressed. To keep me busy, I started working out and developed an online bridal shop. This slowly got me out of my depression. I ran the online shop for 2 years but gave it up due to lack of business know-how and funding. If only I knew then what I know now! 

When my son started nursery, I applied for an admin and marketing role in a small estate agency across the street from where I live. After a few months, one of the owners started a property investment company and offered me the role of operations manager which I accepted happily. It was a very diverse role with- again -many things to learn on the job. Not only was I in charge of the office and the sales team, but we also used to run quite a few property networking events which allowed me to really build my professional network.  

This job showed me that London is the place to be for the ambitious. Not saying that things are always easy but there are endless opportunities here if you’re open for them. It gave me hope that I could be so much more than what was expected for someone from a troubled background with just an average high school diploma.

Recent times

About a year and a half ago I met a lady from Lewisham who wanted to start a recruitment agency focusing on Black and Brown youngsters and youngsters from troubled backgrounds. The idea was to start in Lewisham, expand to surrounding boroughs and eventually the whole of London. I’ve always been passionate about creating opportunities for our communities and I’m a true believer that real change needs to happen from within. We cannot expect those who benefit from the current system to change it for us. We as a community need to come together to plan, organise and execute effectively.

I had recommended creating a website where we would offer some basic tutorials related to the recruitment process such as how to create a CV, how to dress for a job interview, etc. We agreed and I started working on the website idea while my then partner focused on the recruitment side. Unfortunately, the partnership didn’t work out, but the website idea stuck with me. I started developing the idea further and it went from a small website idea to an extremely ambitious platform. 

I am now close to launching that platform which will focus on financial literacy, personal development and business skills. Although it will be suitable for entrepreneurs, business owners and professionals in general, my intention has always been to focus on underserved groups such as young people, women and BAME communities. It’s important for these groups to learn how to make money, manage money and invest money successfully.

My intention is to create a truly inclusive platform, with the content creators and educators being just as diverse as the groups that I’m targeting. Not just a box-ticking exercise that you see in most companies. 

The Community Research Programme 

Becoming a Community Researcher was a no brainer really. The concept is perfectly in line with my view that change must come from within our communities. When I was conducting research related to my business, I quickly realised that there isn’t much research related to employment or self-employment in the black communities. And whatever I did find wasn’t in much depth. 

There is a natural and understandable distrust within the Black community when it comes to the government and partnering organisations. Therefore, I can imagine that it’s hard for ‘outsiders’ to conduct research within the Black communities and even those who do take part in research to get this community to really open up. Using people from within the community just makes sense and I don’t really understand how they never thought of this before. 

The community research initiative that TSIP is developing is absolutely brilliant. Research should be much more accessible, both in the sense of conducting research as well as being able to access research. It just seems like it’s been deliberately made difficult for ‘laypeople’ to be part of the research that is often used to make important decisions related to our lives and communities, and that’s not right. The framework that TSIP is developing will address all these issues, and I’m pleased and excited to be part of this.