A new café that serves social inclusion and pre-employment experiences has landed in Cranbourne.
Wellcare GG Café, under NDIS support provider Wellcare Australia, held its official grand opening on Monday 4 August. The new inclusive Café is located at the Food Court of Cranbourne Park Shopping Centre.
Café manager Jithu Devasia said they would provide free training to participants with disability for about two to three hours a day.
“We’ll give them the training. Once they are confident, we will help them with the CV. We’ll do multiple mock interviews, give them the confidence to apply for other jobs,” he said.
“We can give them the reference. It’s all about equipping people with disability as much as possible.”
Mr Devasia said they had already received a lot of interest, and in two to three weeks of time, the paperwork would be done, and they would start onboarding people for their training.
He pointed out the Café was all about seniors, and people with disability, and they, as well as their companions and healthcare staff, would receive a discount on all hot drinks.
Looking back on how the Café initiative was started, Mr Devasia said they found that when people with disability came to them for support, they found it really difficult to get a space to work.
“Everybody says that equal opportunity, but when it comes to real-life scenarios, things could be different. The reasons are that they are not trained enough or they don’t have enough confidence in themselves,” he said.
“We found that gap, especially with our participants, we find that it is making them really upset and more anxious and more depressed, and they’re going back to square zero where they started from.
“That’s why we came up with this idea to fill that gap, so our participants will be able to or everybody with a disability will be able to lead a normal life as much as possible.”
The discussion started in August last year, and the current Cranbourne site was located in March this year.
“It took a while to renovate and sort out the rest of the things,” Mr Devasia said.
More sites will be coming soon, with the next one in Frankston, he shared.
