Joy at reopening of ‘lifeline’ café
Mums in search for volunteers to run community hub that’s like ‘a second home’
Friday, 9th June 2017 — By Koos Couvée
Café supporters say: ‘This is a unique place in Islington. The doors are open to anyone’
A GROUP of mothers in Holloway this week celebrated the reopening of a park café that is a “lifeline” for women recovering from depression, domestic violence and bereavement.
Paradise Park Community Café, in Mackenzie Road, suddenly closed on April 28 after Islington Play Association (IPA), the charity that runs it, was hit by funding cuts.
It reopened on Tuesday with reduced hours and with parents volunteering in the kitchen.
The café now opens on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, but the mums are calling for people to volunteer to help run it. They have appealed to businesses to provide sponsorship.
Mum Loriana, who launched a petition to save the café from closure, said: “This is like my second home, so it felt a bit like I was getting evicted when I heard the news of the closure.
“I can’t say how much they helped me here to become stronger as a mum after all I went through. We all help each other out.”
An IPA-run children’s centre and nursery on the site was described by Ofsted as “very well led and managed” in its latest report.
The café is where reception manager Sarah Ghartey refers mothers to other services in the building, including the Somali bilingual stay-and-play group, midwifery services, English for Speakers of Other Languages classes and workshops for parents.
Holloway parent Chloe Hadjimatheou, 42, who regularly visits the café with her two children, said: “This is a unique place in Islington. The doors are open to anyone.”
IPA chief executive Anita Grant, one of those who set up the café 10 years ago, added: “It’s a community hub, and the fact that it has worked and is valued in this way is amazing.”
According to Ms Grant, the Town Hall is opening bids for the nursery’s management, including one from IPA.
A new contract will be awarded in October. Next Wednesday, people are invited to taste mum Patricia Bytautiene’s home-made Malaysian curry at the café.
To sign the “save the café” petition visit www.change.org/p/anita-islingtonplay-org-uk-don-t-close-our-community-cafe-at-paradise-park-children-centre-on-the-28th-of-april
Those interested in volunteering at the café should email save.our.cafe@gmail.com
