The Oswin Project

If you ever find yourself in the centre of Newcastle looking for a great value lunch, you could do a lot worse than try Café 16, a gem of a café in St Nicholas’ cathedral. Café 16 offers a range of home cooked food from the full English breakfast to afternoon tea with everything in-between. What a lot of visitors may not realise is that “home cooked” means that much of the food is prepared at HMP Northumberland. The café is run by the Oswin project, a charity which has helped people with criminal records to find employment, training and support in the Northeast of England. Most of the staff are serving sentences in the prison and benefit from hands-on experience, mentoring and support, as well as gaining training and qualifications.

The Oswin project is not just limited to catering, offenders are given the opportunity to gain skills and qualifications through a variety of initiatives including:

Inside and out: a landscaping, gardening, and household maintenance team, currently working throughout Northumberland, Tyne and Wear and northern County Durham. Oswinners provide a professional service at an affordable cost. Landscaping work includes flagging, blockpaving, edging, laying of quality lawns. Minor building work is also undertaken. Garden maintenance includes lawn care, patios and easy-care garden solutions including weed control, pruning of shrubbery and hedges.

Farming out: promotes vacancies in prisons and helps and prison staff to guide and support those who want to work on farms or for the seasonal harvest when released.

The Oswin project is doing amazing things on a local basis and we are delighted to be supporting it through the Quiz night on 22nd July (see the advert overleaf for details). And why not pop along to Café 16 and support them whilst enjoying some lemon drizzle? You won’t be disappointed.

Find out more at www.oswinproject.org.uk