Community cafe offers free meal and company

Newtown Community Cafe, started in October 2018 to support people who might benefit from regular access to a meal and a welcoming social environment, as well as the need to address the problem of surplus food from stores.

Helen Kynaston who chairs the committee behind the cafe, explained how it all started: “Myself, Dan Mountford and Andrew Bond talked about it for ages as we were becoming aware of the problem.

“We started thinking about children in school holidays, who go to breakfast clubs and have free school meals.

“During holidays parents need to provide two extra meals a day, it’s huge if you don’t have the money. I know as I’ve been there and done it.”

Helen said that they started looking at the wider social issues.

She added: “We started talking about the homeless, people with drug or alcohol problems, mental health issues and loneliness which is a massive issue.

“Some people come here and it’s the only time they will talk to others for days on end.”

Helen went on to explain that volunteers start collecting produce on Tuesdays, with Evans Cafe giving them all their leftover bread.

Tesco, Morrisons and Iceland supermarkets in the town, all donate their leftover food as well.

Volunteers then gather all the produce on Tuesday night and come up with a menu for the Wednesday lunch session, based on the ingredients they’ve received.

Donations are gratefully received in tins on the tables – and are used to buy milk or cheese.

Crisis

Helen continued: “The number varies, sometimes we have just eight to 10 and other weeks we have 25 people and over. When we start cooking we have no idea how many will turn up.”

But more people are needed to help out.

Helen added: “We are short of volunteers, we can operate on six for each session, but by the end of the session we are exhausted.

“If we had more volunteers, expanding from one day a week is something we could think about.”

Powys County Council’s (PCC) anti-poverty champion Cllr Joy Jones has had her remit extended to include food poverty.

She spends her Wednesdays at the Newtown Community Cafe.

Cllr Jones said: “It great to have this cafe available as it can help eradicate loneliness and support anyone in need of a meal.

“We’re in the school summer holidays now and parents know they can come here with their children and get a meal.

“Poverty is getting worse, you have people who are working now having to rely on foodbanks.”

According to the United Nations (UN) there are eight million people in the UK who have trouble putting food on the table.

The Trussell Trust alone distributed over 1.3 million three day emergency food supplies to people in crisis in the 2017/18 financial year.

Three million children are at risk of hunger in the school holidays and foodbanks in Newtown are showing year on year increases.

The cafe is open from 11am to 2pm with lunch available until 1.30pm.

To volunteer, pop into a lunch session and speak to Helen.