By Mikayla van Loon
Part of the philosophy of Kilsyth South Baptist Church (KSBC) is to go out into the community to provide services where needed and that’s the basis of its new coffee cart initiative.
Planning to have the project ready to begin at the end of the month, one of the organisers Keith Richardson said the intention is to provide both free coffees and a smile to people in different parts of the local community.
Initially hoping to help service the growing population of homeless people in KSBC’s local government areas, Mr Richardson said it has spread to providing for an array of people who may require a little bit of extra support right now.
“We [first] looked at a food cart and then we looked at all the problems that would be associated with that and whether we were fully equipped to handle that,” he said.
“We’ve always felt that we had to go to where the people are and help them and the food cart became a bit of a problem and then out of the blue, we heard about a coffee cart.”
From there the idea has grown into a fully fledged and viable community project having received both a $20,000 grant from the Baptist Union of Victoria (BUV) and a $16,000 grant from Bendigo Community Bank Boronia to purchase a coffee cart and generator.
Grateful for the support of the Bendigo Bank and BUV, Mr Richardson said the Two Sparrows Coffee Cart would not have been possible without either of these entities coming onboard.
Since the purchase, volunteers have been able to practise the art of coffee making and will get the chance to learn from professionals with help from a local restaurant.
“One of the benefits of all of this is we have a fair number of young people and a local restaurant is happy to train these people to be a coffee maker, so it also gives them an opportunity to work while they’re studying at a local cafe.”
Having already trialled the cart at the Church on a Sunday and at Gladesville Primary School’s Friday breakfast club, it has been well received by many.
“We bought the coffee cart [to Gladesville] and normally parents just drop the kids off and keep going but they stopped and had a cup of coffee and the principal said to me, it was encouraging to see parents talking to staff,” Mr Richardson said.
Using established connections from chaplaincy work, KSBC also plans on visiting The Basin Primary School once a week to bring a free coffee to parents.
Volunteers also intend on visiting Boronia and Bayswater train stations to “greet people with a cup of coffee on the way home from work”, as well as locating areas of need to provide coffee and conversations to people experiencing homelessness.
“One of the biggest problems we believe facing Maroondah City Council is homeless people and so we are looking at areas that we might go at the end of the day, not just with coffee, but because we have a generator we can plug in a sandwich maker so we could make toasted sandwiches.”
While ideas and possibilities are endless, the coffee cart outreach program aims to support those in the community who may be facing tough times or disadvantages and Mr Richardson said it is his hope KSBC can collaborate with other organisations because “when you’re not competing with each other, you can complement each other.”
