Lunch Club Assistant at The Access Place

The Access Place Lunch Volunteer

Time commitment: 10.30-2.30pm

The Access Place: 6 S Gray's Cl, High St, Edinburgh EH1 1TQ

Overview

The Access Place is a one stop shop offering services including housing, health and social work to anyone experiencing homelessness. In partnership with Cyrenians, ELGT and others a community garden has been established in the derelict playground attached to the building providing a green haven for staff and service users. It has become the heart of a wider green nature health programme involving service users from the Access Place and provides a range of garden activities, and every Wednesday a free lunch!

What are the aims and expectations of the role?

To work with garden coordinator to cook and serve a free lunch to service users and staff from the Access Place. Since its launch in May '23 this has become a popular event with up to 40 people attending lunch.

As important as providing food, the lunch is also a way of connecting people with the garden, and hopefully being an introduction to greater involvement in the Nature Health Plan.

The Garden Lunch volunteer will help to prepare the food, set out condiments and cutlery, to serve food, to ensure tea and coffee making facilities are stocked up, and to help to tidy away everything after lunch.

About Cyrenians

Cyrenians is over 50 years old. We began with the creation of an innovative community to meet the needs of a group of homeless people who had fallen through the cracks of whatever support was available at the time.  Our roots lie in responding to the injustice of homelessness. 

We have spent the last five decades journeying with people grappling with the causes and consequences of homelessness through building and nurturing of trusted relationships and engaging with social exclusion and inequality which has so often been at the root of their tough reality. We are values-led and relationship based; our core values are Compassion, Respect, Integrity and Innovation.

Cyrenians’ head office is based in Edinburgh, with smaller offices in other areas, including Falkirk and West Lothian. Cyrenians is a Scottish Charitable Incorporated Organisation (SCIO), registered charity SC011052.