An innovative new venture run by Welling-based mental health and wellbeing charity, Bridge Support (www.bridgesupport.org) is to open in the heart of Woolwich at 23, Angelsea Road, SE18.

Opening on Tuesday 22nd August 8am-4pm, everyone is invited to visit and purchase the delicious food and drinks on offer.

Stir is a social enterprise café, promoting wellbeing and recovery. Recognising the link between what we eat and how we feel, the café offers good mood food to boost mood levels. Wherever possible Stir use freshly grown herbs and vegetables from their allotment, as well as coffee beans from a local supplier in Kent.

The café also provides a bridge back into employment, using a volunteer team who want to gain work experience before moving on to paid employment. Students from the Recovery College, which is based on site and offers educational courses for development, have been trained up as volunteers working in the café. They are ready to serve customers with their newly acquired skills.

The café’s focus is on improving the mood of the whole the community, this includes their volunteers – who are using Stir to gain the necessary skills required for employment – as well as customers.

CEO of Bridge Support, Raymond Sheehy, said: “At Bridge Support, the charity which runs Stir café, we are dedicated to improving wellbeing of all our staff and clients and this ethos extends to our new social enterprise venture.

“The café will serve delicious good mood food at reasonable prices and our volunteers will benefit enormously from the project giving them valuable skills to be able to enter the world of employment. We encourage all the community to support this exciting and unique café and to enjoy the experience while supporting a great cause.”

If you want to support the local community, Stir will be the place you need to go. Feeling blue? Pop down to Stir in Woolwich for a little pick-me-up, if the atmosphere doesn’t make you feel good then the food will!

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Submitted by Polly Morgan