The women learning English through their love of cooking

• A video report by Jennifer Buck.

A cafe in Manchester is helping women communicate better and get qualified for future jobs.

Located in same building as Southway Housing extra care apartments in Burnage, Dahlia House Cafe is the perfect meeting place for people who live in the flats and the wider community.

The cafe is run by volunteers, many of whom speak English as a second language.

This gives them the chance to improve their language skills and build the confidence they'll need to secure full-time jobs.

Najwa Benramadin runs the kitchen as a social enterprise, and as an interpreter helps the women get the qualifications they need to progress.

Ms Benramadin said: "I know a lot of women from ethnic backgrounds who are very highly qualified in the kitchen, but don't know where to start and one of the main reasons is the English language is a barrier."

Many of the local people who use the cafe are elderly and for 95% of them, English is their first language and this allows them to help the volunteers practice their language skills.

Amina is a volunteer from Libya and she says her experience at Dahlia has helped her become more fluent.

She said: "I have to speak with people, so it puts me in the position to use my words and use my sentences so when I hear it everyday, the English Language, it has improved my skills."

The café used to be open two days a week, but that quickly increased to five days to deal with the increasing demand from the community and the residents.

One resident said: "The food is nice, the food is beautiful and I do try different foods, the butter chicken, the Moroccan chicken."

Another said: "I come down, even if I'm not hungry, I come down for the company sometimes. But you can not be hungry and then see and smell the food, so I tend to get a takeaway and take it upstairs with me, the food is delicious."

For the future, the cafe hopes to get funding so that volunteers can become employees.

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