Ashton Secondary School, Glasgow

The Memorial Trust was approached by the Friends of Ashton, an inner city state special school in north-east Glasgow providing Additional Learning Support [ALS] alongside mainstream secondary education. Funds were needed to equip an on-site café for the school and local community in order to boost pupils’ employment prospects by providing training and work experience.  

The latest Impact Report says the school now has 134 pupils who all have complex physical and learning difficulties. 75 are neurodiverse and 42 use wheelchairs. The café provides a safe environment in which they are encouraged to make independent decisions by getting involved in the menu, preparing and serving food and taking payments. They have also helped develop a horticultural area where vegetables, soft fruit, herbs and flowers are grown with surplus produce donated to local food banks.

Plans include extending the café’s “food to table programme”, opening a small shop to sell produce and creating a mobile venture supplying food to local businesses and events.