Exeter College student Khaled Deakin has slowly been building his profile and business within the community over the last four years, thanks to confidence gained by studying in the College’s Adult provision.

A Syrian refugee, Khaled arrived in Exeter with his wife in March 2017 speaking no English at all. With help from both Refugee Support Devon and Devon County Council, he enrolled on an entry level ESOL course at Exeter College, whilst also gaining a scholarship through RefuAid.

“My English became better and I moved from entry level to Level 2. I was thinking of studying social work because I had experience with Unicef before I came here”, Khaled said, but unfortunately he did not have the qualifications necessary to enrol on the programme. “I worked hard to get here last year but I didn’t have all of the qualifications. I then thought, why am I not doing another course?”

Khaled has worked tirelessly in the local community since arriving from Syria. He regularly runs exercise classes, helps at the local mosque and he can often be found volunteering his Sundays to distribute home-cooked Syrian vegetarian meals to homeless people in the city centre. As a result of his outstanding work in the community, a local food bank employee nominated Khaled for The Guardian’s ‘Guardian Angel’ series and he was subsequently contacted via social media by a journalist. His story was featured earlier this month.

Whilst being interviewed for the piece, the journalist asked Khaled about what would make his life in Exeter easier, to which he responded “a food truck, something to start a small business.”

“I had previously had a plan to open a restaurant in Exeter. I did a business plan with the Job Centre and other companies to get a loan, but because of the pandemic it fell through.”

Khaled Deakin

The journalist from The Guardian connected Khaled with a company that helps businesses start up and grow, and they helped both him and his wife (who is also a student at Exeter College) to achieve further qualifications in food hygiene.

With the process of getting his business started proving to be slow, Khaled decided to use his new qualification to enrol on an Access to Business course at the college with the aim of eventually going onto Higher Education at university.

“My dream is to manage my own business, which I’m going to start soon in Exeter. In the future, because of this course, it will help me develop it.”

Khaled

Khaled has set his sights high: “Maybe I will have a restaurant rather than a food truck, maybe I will explore outside of Exeter, in the UK or other countries. The Access to Business course will help me with this and with university in the future as well.”

“Staff at Exeter College are friendly and the teachers are really lovely people. They always help me and other students.”

Khaled

And Khaled was quick to recommend Exeter College to prospective Access to Higher Education students: “I recommend people to do Access courses. Higher Education is for life, for everyone. When you have a Higher Education Degree or Certificate you will get a good job, you will get a good salary, you will improve your life, other’s lives and the community as well, and you could make something special for you.”

Take the leap and learn more about our Access to Higher Education and our ESOL courses.