Café and garden centre awarded €10k in funding

Café and garden centre awarded €10k in funding

By Maurice Garvey 

A SOCIAL enterprise café and garden centre in Walkinstown has been awarded over €10,000 in funding along with a range of business supports.

Duncan Walker, Social enterprise Manager at Walkinstown organisation Walk, was one of seven social entrepreneurs to receive funding and support of over €450,000 from private investors at the Social Entrepreneurs Ireland (SEI) Awards.

Social Entreprenueurs Donal Murphy Duncan Walker and Darren Ryan

Mr Walker, accepted the award at the Mansion House on October 4, on behalf of the social enterprise organisation, which supports people with intellectual disabilities to find meaningful employment.

Located on the Long Mile Road, Walk was rewarded for its popular Green Kitchen Café and Garden Centre at Walkinstown Green – which has been transformed from a derelict building to a centre that provides a range of programmes to support people with disabilities.

Catherine Kelly, Director Services at Walk, said the idea for the project in Walkinstown was kickstarted by Walk CEO Joe Mason, and today it “bridges the gap between people with disabilities and the labour market.”

“Duncan does a great job in managing the Walkinstown project. The most important thing for Walk is supporting people with disabilities to live self-determined lives and this is achieved through Walk’s social enterprises like the Green Kitchen, the café in Richmond Barracks and our community programmes, including our inclusive education in Tallaght Institute of Technology and our intern programme in Tallaght Hospital.”

Earlier this year, SEI launched a nationwide competition and selected seven winning entries from hundreds of applications.

SEI CEO Darren Ryan said the winning entries represented “ambitious people with innovative solutions to Ireland’s social problems.”

One MC at the awards was former SEI award winner Aoibheann O’Brien, co-founder of Tallaght-based social enterprise FoodCloud – a not-for-profit which rescues large volumes of surplus food from businesses and redistributes it to charities.

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