New cafe opens in Bunbury which trains people of all abilities and helps them prepare for the workforce

A new cafe has opened in the South West offering training to people of all abilities and helping them prepare for the workforce. The Red Dove Experience Cafe in Bunbury is a joint initiative between the South West Allied Therapies and the Bunbury Uniting Church. The cafe — which opens every Wednesday from 11.30am to 1.30pm — aims to develop hands-on hospitality skills, focusing on food preparation and customer service. SWAT skills coach and cafe coordinator Joelene Martin said the program exposed clients to a real-life workplace. “The focus is hospitality, but the skills involved can be transferred into other areas,” she said. “The aim is to get them feeling confident enough and finding their feet and giving them that exposure to a real-life work environment before they set their sails into the real world and hopefully get employment.” The cafe had a grand opening a fortnight ago, starting with a small menu which the team hopes to expand in the future. They have six staff, who are required to have an NDIS plan to participate in the program. “Most of our clients are school leavers, sort of (aged) 17 to 25, but we do take anyone who’s wanting to build those skills,” Ms Martin said. “They’re learning point of sale, how to welcome customers in, how to serve the tables, how to use a coffee machine, how to use an industrial dishwasher.” As well as the cafe, SWAT is also working on a separate project called Gather and Co South West. It aims to be an employment hub designed to provide opportunities for people with disabilities, which will include micro-enterprises, retail experiences and cafe experiences. SWAT co-owner Reece Wright said the project, which had received NDIS funding, had been a pipe dream between himself and his business partner Michelle Benjamin for many years. “We saw a gap where a lot of people were finishing school and then not having something that they could really move on to that gave them meaning in their daily life,” he said. “We were already working on people developing work skills, but we had limited opportunities about where we could then transition people to gain real-world experience and to interact with the real-life community.” The hub will be another stepping stone for people with disabilities on their path towards employment and offer a slightly less sheltered environment than the Red Dove Cafe. “We want to change the perception of what it means to be disability employment or a place that sells disability goods,” Mr Wright said. He said the goods were often undervalued by the community just because they were made by someone with a disability, or conversely overvalued out of sympathy. “We really want to change that perception so we can say, ‘this is just good quality and it doesn’t matter who makes it’.” Gather and Co South West is earmarked to open before the end of the year at 22 George Street, Bunbury.