My Father’s House, a community food kitchen, is turning a Simon’s Town coffee shop into a service centre for the homeless.
The coffee shop, Kaló Kafé, is next to the kitchen, in Station Road. It closed its doors on Sunday. The premises is co-owned by Liza Valayadum, the wife of My Father’s House founder Pastor Shaddie Valayadum, and the chairman of the charity’s board, Nico Panagio.
The coffee shop was set up originally to help fund the kitchen, but Pastor Valayadum said it could be more useful as a resource, service, and skills-development centre.
There is a large downstairs area which will be used to run rewards programmes in line with Project Home, the initiative that gives food and rewards vouchers to the homeless for attending support workshops (“Reward system to be run for homeless,” Echo November 18, 2021). An upstairs area will be used as a counselling, meeting, and consultation room.
Programmes will run from 8am to 4pm daily and lunch will be served next door at the kitchen.
“It will be a tranquil space for the homeless to come and relax,” Pastor Valayadum said.
The City’s field workers would also be able to use the venue to grab a coffee or take a break, he said.
The homeless will be able to buy a “decent cup of coffee” and a sandwich for R5. And My Father’s House will continue to sell coffee, samoosas, and selected cakes from the service centre to fund its operations.
“The centre will be run in a similar way to The Net in Fish Hoek,” Pastor Valayadum said.
“We wish My Father’s House everything of the best in the extension of their programme,” Ms Valayadum said.
Ward councillor Simon Liell-Cock said the service centre was a “positive step forward” and Pastor Valayadum had his full support.
“Pastor Shaddie wishes to have a space where training, educating, sharing, and mentoring programmes can be linked to the current feeding scheme. This will move the project to the next level, as feeding schemes that are not linked to programmes are just dealing with the symptoms and not the problem.”
He said had used some of his ward allocation to pay for social development field officers to work on the streets of Ward 61.
“These field officers work with My Father’s House to assess and assist people coming to the kitchen and with a venue now available for programmes linked to the kitchen, these field workers will be able to extend their work to collaborate with My Father’s House on programmes aimed at skills development, rehabilitation, and reintegration.”
Call Pastor Valayadum at 082 381 0384 or visit www.myfathershouse.org.za for more information.
