Café creating job opportunities for people with disability celebrates Social Enterprise Day and one-year milestone

Award-winning social enterprise café Where Is My Coffee? (WIMC) will celebrate its one-year anniversary next month. Located in Wangaratta, the café offers learning experiences for employment outcomes for people with disability.

Today is Social Enterprise Day! Part of Global Entrepreneurship Week, the day focuses on celebrating innovative businesses that exist to create a fairer and more sustainable world.

The café is the first for-purpose organisation VMCH, and, thanks to its success, the organisation will next month officially launch its second café in Torquay.

WIMC Team Leader Corneilius Scott says the team looks forward to celebrating Social Enterprise Day, and its successes over the past 12 months when they hit one year of operations in December.

Since it opened in 2021, the café has supported 22 trainees, with two going on to find paid roles locally and six more readies to transition to work by January 2023. The team has made an incredible 18,736 coffees and is averaging two catering gigs per week.

“The café has helped build trainees’ confidence levels, communication and life skills, knowledge and independence. It’s opened new doors to opportunities and expanded people’s support networks,” Corneilius says.

“It’s good for me because I had trouble making friends,” she says. “The skills I am learning here will help me talk to people outside my comfort zone and in the future when I am studying and have a full-time job.”

At a community level, Corneilius says the social enterprise aspect really shines.

“We have affiliated ourselves alongside other businesses that encompass low income, homelessness, mental health, the LQBTQI+ community and other non-for-profit organisations to help create awareness of less mainstream communities, eradicate stigma and educate people.”

“Where Is My Coffee? is an ‘out of the box’ program – no one is pigeonholed. Everyone is given the right to express themselves and be who they are, to feel acknowledged, welcome, safe, accepted and rewarded,” he added.

Where Is My Coffee? was honoured with a Victorian Disability Award for ‘excellence in employment outcomes’ in October 2022.

Related: Social enterprise café creating job opportunities for people with disability wins state award

Menchie Khairuddin

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Menchie Khairuddin is a writer Deputy Content Manager at Akolade and content producer for Third Sector News. She is passionate about social affairs specifically in mixed, multicultural heritage and not-for-profit organisations.

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