Educafe Spring Term Update 🌼
You can always guarantee you’ll be welcomed to Educafe by a team of smiling faces and this term has been no exception!
We’ve seen a wonderful increase in visitors, especially in our vibrant corners of community connection; The Chatty Corner, Knit and Natter and Seated Wellbeing. It’s been heartening to witness so many English learners and new visitors joining us each week.
A huge thank you to Honesty Group, the student bakers at Mary Hare School and our new Bake a Difference donor, GAIL’s Bakery, for helping us support nearly 700 visitors each month with delicious treats. We’re also proud to share that Educafe has been awarded a Grade 5 Food Hygiene Rating – a huge thank you to Jules for running such a tight ship in the café!
Another exciting development has been the merger of Berkshire School of English with Educafe, forming our new sub-division: Educafe Education. This innovative step enables us to offer more structured educational opportunities and to extend our impact across West Berkshire and beyond.
We’re also thrilled to announce that we’ve been awarded a five-year grant from the National Lottery Community Fund! This transformational support will allow us to cover our core costs, build on our mission and plan sustainably for the future. Sharing this wonderful news with our visitors, volunteers and supporters has been a real highlight – this achievement belongs to all of us.
A special moment this term was our feature on BBC Radio Berkshire, where two of our long-standing visitors shared their personal stories and spoke movingly about the sense of community and belonging, they’ve found at Educafe.
We also launched our Hong Kong Health and Wellbeing Project, in collaboration with the Golden Age Group in Reading. It’s been a pleasure to welcome them into the Educafe community and begin this important new initiative together.
Throughout everything, we’ve continued to reflect on our day-to-day work, recognising the changing needs of our visitors and the pressures this can place on our team. We are deeply grateful for our volunteers – their energy and commitment are never taken for granted. Supporting them remains central to everything we do.
This term, we said farewell to some wonderful volunteers and as always, have welcomed new faces into our community. We are currently recruiting volunteers for The Parents Village and The Chatty Corner – two special spaces where friendships blossom and meaningful conversations are shared. If you’d like to give back to your community and become a local hero, we’d love to hear from you. Please email info@educafeuk.co.uk and we’ll be in touch to learn more about how you’d like to get involved.
Educafe is, at its heart, about people. And once again this term, we’ve seen the power of coming together – celebrating the highs, meeting challenges head-on and embracing the richness of our diverse and talented team.
One of our visitors summed it up beautifully:
“I could come to Educafe every day if I could.”
Thank you for being part of our journey 💛
#Educafe #CommunityMatters #EducafeEducation #VolunteerAppreciation #BakeADifference #NationalLotteryFunded #InclusionInAction #BBCBerkshire
