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.

There 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.

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.

Our lives, the message

The lives of these workers with Special Needs changed dramatically after working in the cafe. They received their very first pay cheques in life here and were able to support themselves financially. As we work and live with them like a closely-knit family, we are able to show Christ in us and send a strong message to them. Our lives are the message. Many times, they asked about our faith and they were keen to know Jesus and the stories in the Bible. Discussing the Bible became a daily routine in the shop. Glory to God! One of our male physicallychallenged employees was baptised in December 2019. Two other workers have accepted Christ as their personal Lord and Saviour. Whenever we receive delivery orders, our workers acknowledged that it is God who supplied them and thanked the Lord for giving us business. We praise God for giving us a safe platform to share His Love freely and that our workers are able to meet Jesus right here. On top of attaining monetary rewards, our workers also find salvation, joy, confidence, purpose, and direction in their lives. Lives are indeed changed and improved here!

Multiplication

So far, all our workers were able to meet every order independently as the orders are simple to produce. If there is a need to expand the ministry in future to benefit more people with Special Needs, our current workers are confident to train other workers for new outlets. Training like-minded people with missional business (MB) interest is also our priority. To date, we have provided experiential coaching for four people from two countries. Each of them spent one to two months in our food outlet. They learnt all the baking skills needed and important lessons about MB in this Creative Access Nation (CAN) country. They learnt to work with both regular workers and workers with Special Needs here. They had a chance to experience living in this city and interacting with like-minded members of our community here. While they equipped themselves here, they also had ample time to crystallise their calling. We are glad we can prepare them for MB and are hopeful that they will come on board. The ground is ready for multiplication and we are waiting for more support for this kingdom business.

Stable workforce

As both of us were previously not from the food industry and the business world, we learnt many lessons in this new adventure. We realised that it is very difficult to hold the workers as the workforce here is very volatile. Though working in the cafe is both simple and enjoyable, we have had a high turnover of 23 workers in the first six months of business. These workers quit due to a number of reasons like family and study commitments. Only when we started hiring workers with Special Needs and their family that our workforce stabilised. Hiring high functioning workers with Special Needs is indeed manageable; most of them take about two months to gain independence. Although they may make little mistakes every now and then, they were not too much trouble to rectify. We work in the shop like family working together, and workers come to work joyously every day.

Right products for the customers at the right location

The second lesson we learnt was that although choice of location is very important for retail businesses, launching suitable products are equally or in fact may be more important for a business to succeed. As our outlet is in the midst of established restaurants, a take-away counter serving toast may not be most ideal here. The customers are less inclined to bite on bread when they are surrounded by many restaurants. Moreover, bread is not the staple food here. We noticed that people coming from more metropolitan cities are more interested in eating bread. They found our toasts very good and often suggested that we start similar business in their cities. Even though our products are healthier (less oily, spicy, and salty) than most food found in this city, people here are not ready to buy into the idea of eating healthily. However, as stewards of His ministry, we insist on not using too much oil, food colouring, preservative, and other food additives to enhance favour. Healthier corn oil, and fresh and natural fruits are used to prepare all our products. Hence, we have gained some loyal, returning customers. Most of our income comes from the sale of fruit juices. Small items like eggettes seems to sell better than toasts too. To survive in this highly competitive market, we must be flexible and agile, and listen to our customers whilst paying attention to providing healthy and quality products. For take-away food retail businesses, it would be better if outlets were located at the street level. For delivery only businesses, a location can be more flexible as long as the shop is near a high-density residential or office area. In addition, selling staple food items like rice, fried rice, or rice noodles is more likely to garner high business volumes.

Special Needs Learning Support Centre

There are at least 10,000 people with Special Needs in this city but there are only three public schools available for them. These schools only take in very high functioning children, making it impossible for less abled children to enter the Special Needs schools here. As a result, many of these people here receive no professional intervention and education. The schools here also stop taking in students who are 18 years old and above. We saw a great need to set up an early intervention centre to help young kids as well as provide training and equipping those who are 18 years and above with living and vocational skills. A private learning centre for people with Special Needs was established in the last quarter of 2019 to meet the needs of these people.

Small setup for easy multiplication

The learning centre occupies only an area of 95 m2 and can take in a maximum of 15 students at any one time. We intended it to be a small centre so that it would not be a burden financially and would not attract unnecessary attention. If there is a need to expand, we could also easily multiply with another small setup. We have one special needs educator and two occupational therapists who share the vision and joined us at the centre.

Professional consultancy with His love

The centre is equipped with many teaching aids suitable for cognitive development and equipment for sensory integration. There is also a kitchen and laundry area for imparting life skills. In future, we hope to prepare some of these students to enter the work force. Our teachers conduct therapy sessions through sand play and music. On top of these, we include assessment services and other lessons like roller blading courses to enhance learning support to the students. We are different from the other three schools currently in the city. Our teachers have many years of professional experience and teach with abundant love. Parents have testified that their kids demonstrated significant positive change after attending a few lessons with our teachers. Students had remarkable improvement in areas like concentration, speech, communication, and behaviour. We praise God for bringing students to our centre. Although we are only three months into this business, we are already facing a shortage of manpower. It is our desire to appeal for special needs professionals and therapists to join us in this meaningful ministry. We intend to provide counselling services to parents of our students if we can have qualified counsellors join our team. We can then interact more with the parents and provide holistic support for these families.

Sustainability and meeting the needs

Many single income families cannot afford to pay school fees. One school in a nearby town is charging 10,000 units per month for services similar to what we provide at our centre. Even though we capped the school fees at a maximum of 2000 units to help them, it is still a heavy burden for many of them. Supporting such families financially becomes a challenge for us. As this is operated using a for-profit business model, we need to justify our existence by making enough profit to be viable.

There are many abled people with Special Needs who are capable of working and that they should not be deprived of job opportunities in the market place.

MB in CAN countries

A people-focused MB model has a brighter future for mission work in CAN countries. This is especially true when the country becomes richer and more developed; what more when the local authorities have tightened controls. We also see that the two platforms we have set up can provide a source for livelihood to people with Special Needs and improve their lives by providing early intervention. We can support these people and their families holistically and give them hope. We are proud to send a strong message to potential employers that there are many abled people with Special Needs who are capable of working and that they should not be deprived of job opportunities in the market place. We have also explored the possibility of working with the local churches and other mission agencies to operate the two businesses, so that we could achieve early indigenisation. However, they are not ready to take on this task now. We will continue to empower the locals through transferring our know-how, vision, and mission. One day, when the time is right, God will move the locals to do His work here and beyond their nation.

“Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock.” Matthew 7:24

Editor’s note: This article was first published in the Vol. 15 No. 2 May- August 2020 issue of Mission Round Table, the OMF Journal for Reflective Practitioners.