The Revd Rachel Ganney and St John’s Church, Bransholme, Hull launched a café with a difference this year. The café, which was open from 7th to 18th September, was organised and run by supposedly unemployable young people.

“They must be mad” or so said many of the people who heard about the idea to take a group of young people who everyone else had given up on and help them to run a two week café in the grounds of St John’s Church, Bransholme. At first glance the young people fulfil all the worst statistics that some sections of the media love to dwell on: between them they’ve experienced homelessness, prison, teenage pregnancy and persistent unemployment, but there are real people behind the headlines with hopes and dreams of their own.

The idea came out of a conversation between Tessa Oram (Faith in Education) and Mark – one of the young people. He had the ambition to try his hand at running a café, and Tessa was keen to support it, so all that remained was to find a venue, and this is where St John’s came in.

Rev’d Rachel Ganney said “Ever since we got our new roof we have been looking at ways that our building and land could be used for the benefit of our community, so when I heard about this project I jumped at the chance to get involved. It has all worked out far better than we even hoped. Over the fortnight we saw the young people grow in confidence and have the opportunity to get their food safety and hygiene certificates, we welcomed some local people who had never come into the church before and we were visited by church members from further afield, some of whom had never been to Bransholme before and were surprised to see how much it differed from their expectations.”

”It was an exhausting fortnight for Tessa, Rachel, Julia Clapp and Frank Clarkson, who were facilitating the project, and very challenging at times for Mark, Becci, Aleisha and Danni, who were doing the hard work, but we all agree that it was very worthwhile. It seems appropriate to leave the last word to one of the young people: “Thank you for doing this for us. We all love you all and are appreciative of what you have helped us with and done for us all. Thank you for helping us find that we’re not all bad.”


Article and picture by the Revd Rachel Ganney

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