Highams Park News

Joseph Clarke School opens training café in Highams Park

The purpose-built facility is designed to give students valuable work experience

Credit: Highams Park School

Joseph Clarke School, a special school for students aged three to 19 with vision impairments and additional needs, has opened the doors of its brand-new training café.

Located opposite the school on Vincent Road, the training café has been named in honour of the creator of Braille, Louis Braille. The purpose-built facility is designed to give students valuable work experience whilst providing members of the public with food and drink.

The grand opening of the café saw the gathering of many members of the school and community as well as blind entrepreneur and former MasterChef contestant Amar Latif, who cut the ribbon and revealed a commemorative plaque.

The café is now open to the local community offering a tasty range of food and drink and will be staffed by the school’s students.

Amar Latif, a former contestant on Celebrity Masterchef, with students at Highams Park School

The training café presents a fantastic opportunity for students to develop important life skills and gain valuable work experience. There are very few facilities like this anywhere in the country and school leaders are proud to be able to offer such opportunities for their young people.

The school says its older students have already begun learning the skills needed to work in the café including cooking, preparing drinks and waiting tables, and have been working on their communication and customer service skills.

Joseph Clarke students now look forward to putting their new skills into action. The café is open from 10am to 3.30pm on weekdays, with a view to extend opening hours to Saturday in the “near future”. 

Chadia Filali-Moutei, principal of Joseph Clarke School, said: “We are absolutely delighted to open the doors of Louis’ Training Café which is dedicated to providing work experience and life skills to our students, many of whom have a visual impairment, as well as providing a welcoming hub for our community.

“A special thank you goes to our sponsors, The Whitefield Development Trust and The Wolfson Foundation, for making this amazing facility possible and to Amar Latif for officially opening the café.  As a blind entrepreneur and advocate for people with disabilities, Amar was such an inspiration for our students.” 

At the event, Amar Latif, entrepreneur and motivational speaker, said: “It’s a great honour to be invited to the special opening. I’ve never known anything like this before – what an amazing thing to do.

Being blind myself, I know how hard it is out there in the world and anything that can help the confidence of the students is going to be amazing and this is such a great initiative and the student’s dedication is so inspirational. I look forward to following all of their progress.”

Meanwhile, Anna, a student at the school, said: “I have been learning lots of useful skills in the training café and it has been really good for developing confidence in myself. I really enjoy being in the café, learning how to use the coffee machine and serving customers.”


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