Wales World Cafe



The idea of the Wales World Café was started by a group of women from the Golden Years Project who face barriers in employment, they lack work experience, enterprise background or employability skills but are experts in cooking. Nor are they able to access culturally sensitive learning environments where they could develop these skills.  So we agreed to build on their abilities and develop their skills through running a café where people from the community and their family members could join and enjoy a hot homemade hot lunch.

The café aims to develop a community space where people come together and socialise in a friendly atmosphere to enjoy free freshly cooked authentic meal once a week.

The café is run by volunteers who continuously receive training in the catering business. Nowadays the café has been attended by around 20 people each week.


This café will be a safe space in the city where people could enjoy lunch, socialise comfortably, and meet members of different organisations and politicians. Furthermore, The Café team link with isolated older people of the diverse BME communities and invite them for lunch where they can socialise and enjoy a hot lunch served in a very friendly and homely atmosphere.

 


The team chose the name Community World Café because they come from worldwide diverse ethnic backgrounds.


The aim is to help establish a self-reliant team to run the café and gain skills and confidence which will enable them develop their existing cooking skills and acquire new skills to run their own catering enterprises, thus become economically and socially productive members of the community.

The Community World Café project for older BAME women 50+, aims to support 30 women per year and take them to the next step of running their own catering enterprise.  The participants will be provided with bespoke training courses from professionals, delivered at WCF, to develop:

  1. Hygiene & healthy cooking skills
  2. Entrepreneurial skills
  3. Gardening skills in planting and harvesting seasonal vegetables and fruits.

Corporate teams will be formed and take turns to cater to the WCF events, applying what they have learned to create an authentic organic menu that combines the dozens of different cooking cultures within the group. After six months, this model will be rolled out into a full-fledged social enterprise to be economically productive, and thus act as role models. The grant will cover activity/training costs, staff costs, volunteering and running costs of the project & Liscence & registration costs.

Recently the beneficiaries started running a trial fundraising café, which encouraged around 20 older BME women teamed up to cater weekly  with an open invitation to the community different organisations and politicians.