The therapeutic nature of baking cakes can be a pleasure in itself and is something that brought Giselle hope amidst disadvantage.
Life prior to prison was a battle for Giselle. She had been living on the streets and risking everything to make ends meet. When she was released, she was determined to turn her life around. She had so much to live for and didn’t want to let another day go by where her circumstances restricted her ambition for a better tomorrow. After being introduced to Luminary by a recruitment consultancy charity working with ex-offenders, she was finally ready to let her ambition loose.
Embracing the Luminary experience opened Giselle’s eyes to new opportunities, drawing out skills that were yet to be explored. The art of preparing food for others is strong within Giselle’s heritage – with a baker for a grandad and talented cooks for parents, culinary creativity is in her blood. Similarly, being of Jamaican, Malaysian and Irish descent, she embraces her international origins by bringing together flavours and different traditional cultural dishes from around the world.
Luminary has now become a home for Giselle – a network of women supporting each other.
‘We all feel that the issues we’re facing are the biggest or hardest thing we’ve ever had to deal with. Then, I met some of the amazing women coming through Luminary and it put things into perspective. They’ve all come from such extraordinary struggles and the most inspirational factor among these women is strength of character and perseverance. They are a constant reminder to me that we are all warriors.’