Would you like your cafe to be able to demonstrate the difference it’s making to your staff, volunteers, customers and community? Would you like to be involved in developing a range of tools that other cafes can use to evaluate the impact of their work as well?

Community Food and Health (Scotland) is looking for six community cafes to take part in our new community cafe self-evaluation programme, running between August 2017 and August 2018. The cafes taking part will meet up for three one-day sessions to:

• Learn about and from the cafes hosting the meetings (each of the three days will be held in a community cafe).
• Discuss what their cafes do and aim to achieve (for example, improving access to healthier food through providing good and affordable meals, reducing social isolation for older people offering a safe space within their community, providing training or employment opportunities for young people facing challenges in finding employment).
• Explore how they can find out if they are achieving their aims.
• Develop tools together that they, and other, community cafes can use.
• Consider and share what they find out when putting the tools into practice.
• Consider and share what they learn about the difference they are making.

The cafes taking part will also be expected to carry out some tasks between each of the sessions. Cafes wanting to take part will need to:

• Be able to commit staff or volunteer time to take part in the three sessions – we would like two people from participating café to take part in all three.
• Be able and willing to put what they learn into practice.
• Be willing to gather data over the year, and contribute to the production of a collective ‘evaluation,’ with the other participating cafes.
• Be able and willing to share what they learn, including with other community cafes and other stakeholders.

Flexible, bespoke support from CFHS will be available for the cafes taking part. These will also receive a donation of £500 towards additional costs incurred as a result of taking part (CFHS will discuss what the funding may be used for with participating cafes).

We will begin recruiting for the programme in June, but please contact anne.gibson5@nhs.net before then if you’re interested in taking part.