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HARVESTFORCE 2021 • 2
CAFÉ AND EDUCATION MINISTRY for PEOPLE WITH SPECIAL NEEDS Joyous and Hopeful Joyous is an experienced secondary school teacher who has served in the Sunday school ministry for more than three decades. Hopeful has extensive work experience in IT and has served in church in the areas of discipling and training for a good number of years.
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here is a great need to educate the general public on accepting people with special needs in this city in East Asia. The authorities have labelled this group as “disabled”. It is almost impossible for this group of people to find jobs here. No employer is willing to hire them even for simple jobs like packing and cleaning in shops. Society at large is not ready to embrace them. Most family members feel ashamed to bring them out to interact socially. The public special needs training schools have limited vacancies and resources to educate and train these students. As a result, a huge majority have yet to acquire basic life skills to care for themselves. Many of them are only able to stay at home and continue to be a burden to their families. There seems no hope for them to improve the quality of their lives. His calling
Who can help this group of people and give them hope in life? Who is to bring forth the Good News of Jesus Christ to this neglected and unreached people in the society? Under the strong conviction of the Holy Spirit, the answer became clear that we are the ones called to serve them in this foreign land. We are indeed thankful and joyous to receive this clear direction God has set for us, to set up an employment platform and a learning support centre for people with Special Needs here. As we look back, we realise God had prepared us for this ministry in our home church. We were tasked to start a Special Needs Sunday School seven years ago. We served these children for five years before we embarked on this mission journey. His ministry
Our café is a take-away eatery serving toast, cream puffs, ice cream, fruit juice and other beverages. It is situated at the shopping area in the city centre. It occupies 32 m2 and has a small sitting capacity. It is located at the second storey of a building which has many restaurants. During weekends and public holidays, the place is crowded with diners. This business is ideal as the start-up cost is not too high and the monthly rental is manageable. The chances of making the business sustainable is higher as human traffic is rather good. We were able to break even six months into the business and it is even making small profits today. This business style is also ideal because the skills which workers with Special Needs need to acquire are not too complex. Editor’s note: This article was first published in the Vol. 15 No. 2 MayAugust 2020 issue of Mission Round Table, the OMF Journal for Reflective Practitioners.
The café family
In the first six months of running this business, we witnessed to 23 workers, amongst whom were university students. The regular workers heard the name of Jesus for the first time in their lives and understood the purpose of setting up this business. They were touched by the love we showed and were also willing to work alongside workers with Special Needs. Currently, we have a steady work force of five workers. Two of them are mentally-challenged and one is physically handicapped. One worker is the mother of a mentally challenged worker.
