By Tyler Wright
The Tecoma Uniting Church is opening its doors with a new free cafe initiative.
The church has begun opening its doors weekly to a new cafe space named Hills Haven; bringing people together in a place without stigma.
Starting on Friday 10 November, the church is hosting a safe, open and inclusive cafe where people can come and enjoy being together in a creative space.
Tea, coffee and cake will be free or by donation, with voluntary craft activities available for those looking to learn a new skill.
Tecoma Uniting Church’s hospitality coordinator, Sue Brown, said the church has distributed flyers to disability groups who use the hall and the chapel, as well as mums who are able to gather during school drop off.
“Anything to get our community interacting and increase people’s communicating with others and preventing social isolation,” Ms Brown said.
“Often we find that – especially when you’re meeting someone for the first time – if you’re sitting and doing something together it breaks those boundaries down.
“Getting closer to Christmas we talked about the last one [creating] Christmas cards.. but people who don’t want to do that and just want to sit and chat, that’s also absolutely fine.”
What Hills Haven brings to attendees is a meeting place without time constraints of a mainstream cafe or a community hub – with barrista-style coffee and optional craft activities at hand.
“If people want to put in a donation towards that, they’re very welcome to, but they don’t have to,” Ms Brown said.
The church has also been able to help the community after receiving $10,000 through Yarra Ranges Council’s community grant program.
“We were working on increasing people’s access to healthy food, but also we’re noticing that people take a pre-prepared healthy meal that some of our volunteers had made, but often didn’t know how to take some healthy veggies and make it into a meal,” Ms Brown said.
“We’ve started with the soup and chat classes happening at Carlisle Court across the road for the residents there; It’s a really good way of getting people to interact and have some focus for the day.
“Fortnightly, they’re making soup as a group with ingredients that they get from Food is Free; and then if we need to supplement that with anything extra, we’ve funded that through the grant as well.”
A double powerpoint with USB charging ports is also available at the small library next to the church’s door; a result of needing to meet demand for power after the June 2021 storm event.
The Tecoma Uniting Church is located at 1566 Burwood Highway in Tecoma.
Hills Haven will run from 9.30am until 11.30am.
