Café comes to a close - for now!

A Workstart group based at Forth Valley College’s Falkirk Campus have been working on their volunteering and employment skills, in partnership with the Westfield Park Community Centre recently.

They began assisting the centre with various work based tasks including organising storage cupboards, then revitalising the community garden and fixing the garden wall in partnership with Forth Environment Link (FEL).

Once the students had developed their skills through class based work they were ready to take up the challenge of running the Community Café every Tuesday afternoon from 12 -2pm. The Café started in February and was operated on a donations only basis so that people could pay as much or as little as they could afford. Over the weeks the students were able to provide a lunch menu of soup, toasties, scones and tray bakes.

This project was supported by Lecturer Ruari Chatburn who juggled the students’ cookery class time to provide the goodies. The students were also supported in their ‘workplace’ by ASWs Lisa Munro, Jen Murtha and Dave Pine.

The centre kindly waived the hire charges for venue so that the College were able to use their facilities.

Lindsay Graham, the Westfield Park Community Centre interim Manager, said: “It has been great having the students over. It’s clear that they had been well drilled before they came over and they have just gone from strength to strength, you could see their confidence grow as the weeks went on.”

The Café ended on Tuesday 19 of May and the total amount of donations came to £306.35, and 224 folks were served their lunch.

Lecturer Stewart Ritchie said “This partnership with Westfield Community Centre and Forth Valley College has been in place for several years and continues to grow stronger. Workstart are a group that requires more support and funding to overcome the barriers they face entering employment or further education, and every student on the course now has a positive destination after their year at college.”

For more information on Supported Learning courses at Forth Valley College visit: https://www.forthvalley.ac.uk/courses/supported-learning

Photo - The picture shows the students handing over donations to the Westfield Park Community Centre committee and staff.