Glasgow Airport in Scotland has awarded £3,700 (US$4,800) to help social enterprise Glesga Roasters, which provides mentoring and skills-based training to people in rehabilitation, to establish a new community coffee shop.
The £3,700 is being made available by the airport’s FlightPath fund and will be used to help furnish a new coffee shop at Bishopbriggs Community Church, where Glesga Roasters is based. The social enterprise will use the award to work with people in recovery to help build their confidence, get them work-ready and become professionally qualified coffee roasters and baristas. Following this, Glesga Roasters clients will then be fully integrated into the workplace placements before moving into full-time employment.
More than £90,000 (US$118,000) is being made available by FlightPath in 2022. The fund’s committee is continuing to urge neighboring groups and organizations to submit applications and is looking to support sustainability-themed projects aimed at improving the environment in the communities local to the airport.
Duncan Stevenson, operations manager at Glesga Roasters, said, “This award from the FlightPath Fund is very welcome and will ensure we can properly furnish the coffee shop, which we hope will be a real asset to the local community and an ideal training base for our baristas. The team at Glesga Roasters would like to take this opportunity to thank the fund’s committee for supporting our work in the Bishopbriggs area and beyond.”
Councillor Rosie O’Neil, who sits on the FlightPath fund committee on behalf of East Dunbartonshire council, said, “Glesga Roasters is a fine example of a community enterprise doing fantastic work both at a local level by supporting some of our most vulnerable citizens learn new skills and by ensuring coffee farmers in some of the most deprived parts of the world get a fair deal for their hard work.”