'We were refugees, but now we're entrepreneurs'

Refugees have set up businesses creating jobs in the local area

Yudit Kibrom said she "could not believe" she had made it to the UK after arriving at Dover hidden in the back of a lorry filled with onions.

The then 16-year-old had travelled from Eritrea on a months-long journey, in which she said she was forced to drink water mixed with petrol in the desert due to thirst and constantly feared for her safety.

Ms Kibrom told the BBC she fled "oppression" in the east African country, which the monitor Human Rights Watch has described as having one of the world's most repressive regimes.

Granted refugee status in 2011, she began college but had to drop out as she got pregnant.

Without anyone to help her, Ms Kibrom became a taxi driver so she could fit work around childcare, but said she wanted to be independent and so founded a driving school in Canterbury.

"It was quite hard," the now 35-year-old said. "But I got there."

Overcoming many challenges along the way, she said DLS Driving School was the "best thing" in her life.

"I'm doing something really good to help the community," Ms Kibrom told the BBC, adding how happy she is when she sees former pupils waving at her driving past.

She said she was "not here to rip people off or ruin the country" and refugees like her were "working really hard".

Ms Kibrom said she enjoyed helping people

Having fled Russia's 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Larysa Smirnova arrived in the UK in May 2022 with her nine-year-old son and just one suitcase.

She told the BBC she was warmly welcomed by a host family in Surrey.

But the 31-year-old, who ran her own company before the war, said she soon wanted to support herself.

With her Ukrainian engineering degree not recognised in the UK, she said she took every job she could, cleaning people's homes, windows and gardening, often communicating with customers through Google Translate as she did not speak English.

'I see my future here'

"When you are working you are not worried," Ms Smirnova said. "You don't have time to spend thinking about what is happening to your friends and family back home."

"It was emotional," she added. "It was hard. But I did every job as good as I could."

Ms Smirnova said she saved for several months to buy equipment, only spending money on essentials, and was eventually able to establish her own cleaning business in Godalming, which employs people in the local area.

"I like England," she told the BBC. "I see my future here."

Ms Smirnova wants to stay in the UK

While studying at Kent University, Basma Eldoukhi founded a social enterprise called Roouh, which sells artistic handicrafts made by Palestinian refugee women in Lebanon through an online store.

She told the BBC the enterprise allows the women to share their "stories of displacement and life in the camps" in what they make, besides providing employment in a "difficult economic situation".

The products also help inform people about Palestinian history and heritage, Ms Eldoukhi added.

Ms Eldoukhi's enterprise provides much-needed income for the women in Lebanon

"Some people in the UK can look at Palestinians as victims," the 35-year-old said. "By bringing their art and culture to the country we can humanise them.

"That... [can] bring people together rather than showing us that we are all so different."

Ms Eldoukhi, who described herself as a "Palestinian from a background of displacement", came to the UK as a student in 2019.

She told the BBC her main challenge now was how to scale up the enterprise she had built on her own, alongside her studies.

"I have a lot of ideas, but don't have the time," she said.