Craigsbank Parish Church and the Old Parish Church are partnering on a project with our local Craigmount High School and Christian youth workers from Young Life International to offer a very affordable lunch option in a welcoming environment to the pupils. We are now offering this on Thursday afternoons over the school’s lunch break.
A similar project has developed over a few years as the ‘Liberton Northfield Toastie Tuesday’ lunch club, which serves toasties, a cookie and a drinks can to schoolchildren for £1 every Tuesday of term time. They have served more than 100,000 toasties since they started a few years ago. An outcome from the project is a well-established youth ministry amongst the local churches.
We will be running a similar project on Thursdays from this week, 27 October. The price of the lunch is £1.50, with free fruit if we can. The main aim is to offer Christian hospitality to the children in the parish high school. The catchphrase for the Toastie Tuesdays at present is ‘The best welcome of the week’.
We need your prayers and a few volunteers to help in the kitchen and ‘front of house’ – welcoming, chatting and serving the food. We plan to use the Craigsbank kitchen and large hall, recognising that it will be tweaked and improved as the weeks progress. There was a very successful training and first public session held on Thursday 13 October, when we served some 30 pupils.
Craigmount has two 40 minute-long lunchtimes, juniors at 12:20 and seniors at 13:10. If we offer it for both lunchtimes it will practically mean starting preparation around 11.00am and closing up at around 2.00pm. The pilot scheme will run through the autumn school term and then we will review it for 2023.
If you are interested or would like to volunteer (even if just once or twice a month) then please contact Alan Childs or the church office.