WITH its new community cafe finally open in Rosyth, Fife charity SHIELD is hoping to expand its offering after securing additional premises.

The organisation, set up by West Fifer Sarah Keeble after the pandemic started, is a self-funded group which delivers food parcels, click-and-collect, home-cooked meals, clothing and education bank items to those in need.

Kept going through donations of food and money, it started with the aim to help pensioners and any working families struggling with furlough life, shielding individuals with no help, anyone who's recently unemployed as well as pregnant women and key workers who need food and other supplies.

The group opened its Community Cafe in Rosyth Co-op earlier this month and has now secured the former credit union base where it is hoped a kitchen and workshop will be created.

"We are hoping to make that into a kitchen," explained Sarah. "We have been using my kitchen at the house so I have been working at the cafe then come in and I am cooking.

"The credit union hasn't got a kitchen in it so we are going to have to completely refit it. It is just basically a shell but perfect for what we need to do.

"It means all the food from the cafe can be cooked there and the food waste charity will be based there. There's enough room that we can have a workshop and maybe have three or four people in at a time to teach them to cook on a budget, that kind of thing.

"Once we get charitable status for a food waste charity, we can apply for grants although I am not sure about going down that way.

"If we need to apply for funding, we will. We are hoping to start work on it in April next year. If we can save £200 a week for the next five months and do a few raffles, I think we would be able to save sufficient funds to get the whole thing done. Everything will be second-hand – we will do it on a budget."

Sarah has been delighted by the success of the cafe so far and is hoping to build on its popularity in the coming weeks and months.

"I can see the benefit already," she said. "We have had OAPs in who are happy to pay it forwards and we have had people who are happy just to sit and have some soup and a coffee and a wee chat and not pay which is great."

Sarah said they had also had been given support from Scrap A Car Scotland which has been invaluable, as has her team of volunteers.

"All our volunteers are outstanding," she said. "I have two main core volunteers who work very closely with me and they operate at the college now and I am more down at the cafe.

"It is seven days a week and there are other volunteers who will do pick-ups and the other things. I would say we have got about 30 people in total we can call on. We have got seven volunteers in the cafe on a regular basis plus myself and the other core volunteers."