Friendship and flowers: Bringing people together with Megzi Pearls
29/7/2022
Flowers represent all sorts of wonderful stuff – love, gratitude, joy, beauty – that makes them a favourite gift for friends. But there’s more than just symbolism in Megzi Pearls’ impactful bouquets and letterbox gifts. Each one helps real friendships and connections blossom between disadvantaged women in London.
Founder Megan Kavanagh has overcome her own disadvantages to help fellow mums from similar backgrounds escape isolation and find friends, all using flowers and floristry. She runs workshops which offer so much beyond practical flower arranging skills. They’re a creative outlet, a safe space to talk, a cultural exchange and more.
We’ve used the upcoming International Day of Friendship on 30th July as an excuse to chat with Megan about her mission to bring people together over beautiful blooms.
We’d love to know, what drew you to floristry and flowers?
When I was struggling as a single mum, I wanted to bring women together to share their lived experiences, so I thought using flowers was a great way to connect. I’ve always had an eye for flowers and design and decided to use the two to bring communities together.
Would you mind telling us a bit about how your own background inspired the social mission of Megzi Pearls and who you wanted to support?
Just before I had my first son, I became homeless and was living in hostels around East London. I’d also left school quite young, before I sat my GCSEs. I wanted to use my experience of homelessness, a lack of education and feeling isolated as a single mum to help others facing similar problems. So by fighting my own issues I created a space for mums to go where they could make friends and share their problems.
These women either find us through advertising or I’m partnered with the Bromley By Bow Centre in Tower Hamlets. There’s a doctors surgery and they’re linked to a carers programme, so they would normally bring women to the session. There are sometimes groups I stick with for a number of months, but other workshops are drop-ins with different women and mums at different stages.
Though it is mums we work with, I don’t mind if a woman who isn’t a mum wants to come along too. No matter your background or where you’ve come from – we’re open to everyone.
What’s a typical day like running Megzi Pearls?
Sometimes it’s hectic, because I need to get the kids to school and I’ve had a baby who’s just turned one. Dealing with that in the morning can be a struggle! But once I’ve got that done, I go to the flower market or supermarkets to get the flowers. Then I’d set up a two-hour session and get everyone’s tools and equipment ready. In the workshop, I’d introduce myself, talk a bit about me and then direct the actual facilitating of the class.
At the moment it’s just me running Megzi Pearls, but I do have a few mums who I’ve trained up. So I’m applying for a bit of funding at the moment and if we get it, hopefully I can bring these women into the business and give them a paid role.
Your workshops are about building connections and exchanging cultures as much as learning floristry skills. What do you usually cover in workshops and how do you bring these elements into the training?
One hour is like a fun floristry workshop, the other is a peer-led support session where we talk and have open conversations. Through some of the activity, we talk about different cultures and religions. Each month we cover religious holidays and special days of the year, like Black History Month, Jewish festivals, Valentine’s Day, Easter, Halloween. At Christmas, we do wreath making and table arrangements using different foliages, berries and dried fruit. So there’s quite a range throughout the year!
I worked with a group of Bangladeshi women whose first language was Bengali and their second language was English, which they were still learning. That was one of my first workshops and we were doing Christmas arranging and wreaths. Helping them have a go at these and seeing them enjoy it and understand Christmas was a big achievement because they don’t usually celebrate it.
Have you had any particularly lovely feedback from workshop participants about the friendship and community building side of things?
When the mums start, they don’t know anyone, so the first month is normally just getting to know each other. These women are often quite isolated and don’t really have the support of friendship groups. But by the end of the programme, when I take quotes and feedback from each person, they always share details with each other to stay in touch. So I can actually see they’ve made friends.
One mum said coming to the workshop helped her forget about her issues and the mental health problems she was going through, just for those two hours. Because it’s therapeutic and she got involved in the actual flower design, it took her away from the issues she was facing at the time. When I first started we’d do the odd monthly session and I’d always get asked when are you going to run it again. Sometimes that decision to continue these workshops has been whether or not we get funding, to help us pay for the equipment and flowers.
The social enterprise community is a friendly bunch! Have you made any friends and connections that have helped you on your journey as a business owner?
Yeah, loads! Social Ark is who I went to with my idea. They help young people with a social mission get their business off the ground. They teach us all about social enterprise – before I met them, I didn’t even know what a social enterprise was. They’ve been a major support for us.
I was also a fellow for The School of Social Entrepreneurs. They gave us a grant for taking part in their programme. I was awarded from UnLtd too. Social Enterprise UK have recently got in touch with us and asked us to be a member and send us emails with events that are coming up.
With the International Day of Friendship coming up, we’re thinking about ways to celebrate our friends. Why do you think flowers are a great gift to show you care? And how did your letterbox gifts come about?
You can use flowers for all occasions. As much as we use them for sad things, like funerals, we can also use them as a happy thing. You know, looking at a bunch of flowers on your window sill, the colours and everything – I think it just makes people smile and happy!
With the letterbox flowers, Social Supermarket reached out to us and asked what we could deliver that would fit through someone’s letterbox. At first I wasn’t sure, but once I started researching I came across the actual letterbox box! I thought it was a great idea – putting flowers in the box so people can create their own design, how they want to have it, instead of making the bouquets for them.
Also, you know how many times you’ve missed a parcel, or had to go to the parcel office to receive your item? Since these ones fit through any UK letterbox, it’s a great gift that you don’t have to be home to receive.
We use all different fresh flowers in the letterbox. So on Social Supermarket we have two ranges (13 stem or 18 stem) at the moment. They have lilies, roses, berries, foliage, carnations. Or we can arrange different flowers, colours, styles each time, depending on what the customer wants.
Since we’re chatting about community and connection, let’s end with a fellow social enterprise you’d love to big up.
There’s one called Exconversations, who work with offenders and stuff like that. They do a podcast where they talk about ex-offending and how they can prevent certain crimes, getting people out of that system and showing them there are other ways to live and to change your life.
