My NoNNa's Opens First Student-Designed Wheelchair Workplace Friendly Cafe
Social enterprise firm, My NoNNa’s, which trains and employs Persons with Special Needs – the Intellectually Disabled & Autistic to prepare, cook and serve Italian food at schools, has opened the first Student-Designed Wheelchair Workplace Friendly Café (WFC) in Singapore.
- (1888PressRelease) December 15, 2017 - Singapore – Social Enterprise Firm Ties Up with SUTD to Create and Develop a Café to hire Wheelchair-Bound Individuals.
Co-conceptualised and designed with students from the Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD), the café, called My NoNNa’s Wheelchair Workplace Friendly (WFC) Café, or just My NoNNa’s Café in short, has opened its doors officially to the public recently in the last quarter of 2017.
My NoNNa’s is helmed by Ms Geraldine Tan, who decided to leave the corporate world and start the social enterprise, after working in management for 22 years, when she felt that she had more to offer the society. She created Cirrus Culinnaire, a food brand design and development outfit that employs the disabled with design skills, to help food brands create their brand identities and marketing collaterals.
Soon after, My NoNNa’s was conceived. Geraldine soon realised that she would be able to scale up My NoNNa’s and be able to hire many more Persons with Special Needs with My NoNNa’s. More importantly, the ability to influence and educate students by being sited in schools where future managers and leaders of Singapore could interact with and develop an understanding of what it means to be Special Needs, and would then have no reservations working with or hiring Persons with Special Needs in the future.
My NoNNa’s is currently operating in Raffles Institution and Nanyang Girls High School, in addition to SUTD.
The WFC is Singapore’s first student-designed completely wheelchair-accessible workplace that Geraldine and her team of special needs persons worked on together with the STUD student project team. The students had to research on and understand the needs of the wheelchair-bound.
One of the biggest challenges was space to manoeuvre a wheelchair. The other challenge to overcome was height. These elements and considerations were all incorporated into the design of the WFC. As a bonus, the students even designed an automated pasta cooking machine to assist wheelchair-bound staff with the cooking of pastas.
Geraldine is delighted with the design of the Wheelchair Workplace Friendly Café. Thanks to the unique design of the Café, she is able to hire wheelchair-bound staff, and has since hired a chef who is wheelchair-bound - Chef Jasmine Ho. Chef Jasmine was confined to a wheelchair 3 years ago following a spinal cord injury and has not been able to work in the food & beverage industry since. Thanks to the WFC, Chef Jasmine is able to rekindle her love for cooking and once again do something she is passionate about.
“The best thing about working with my Special Needs staff is that they are very conscientious, and meticulous. What we want is to be able to give them meaningful employment, & with it, a sense of self-worth and independence. The Special Needs Staff, or My NoNNa’s Champions as we call them are dependable and can be an asset to society as long as we put in the effort to embrace their differences. I hope that future generations will consider creating and putting in place systems that welcome and nurture Persons with Special Needs in Singapore. I hope that this café will shine as an example of how we can become truly inclusive as a society. “says Geraldine.
My NoNNa’s Wheelchair Workplace Friendly Café is located at SUTD Singapore University of Technology & Design - 8 Somapah Road, Building 2, #01-203, Singapore 487372. The café is opened from 8am to 8pm, Monday to Friday and is open only for private events & reservations on Saturday, Sunday and Public Holidays.
My NoNNa’s will be hosting a “Social Enterprise Christmas Market” on 15 December, this Friday, from 12noon to 7pm. Members of the public can support this cause and have a Turkey meal, Pizza or Pasta, as well as purchase Christmas goodies such as Christmas logcakes, gingerbread cookies and Christmas fruitcakes, all hand-made by the team at WFC. The public can also purchase hand-made Christmas gifts such as handbags & accessories by partner Social Enterprises at the “Social Enterprise Christmas Market” hosted by My NoNNa’s.
The café’s menu is in Appendix A.
About My Nonna’s
My NoNNa’s is a social enterprise registered with raiSE, the Singapore Centre for Social Enterprise. We engage persons with special needs to give them meaningful employment and help them integrate into society. My NoNNa’s operates Social Enterprise stalls, serves Bento Takeaways or Tapas for parties, and also offers Private Dining and Call-in-Chef services.
Persons with Special Needs include those with intellectual and physical disabilities, as well as those with autism, stroke sufferers and accident victims.
In 2016, My NoNNa’s collaborated with ENCE Marketing Group to create and manage another brand, Poppy, to provide employment to a tier of persons with special needs, who were unable to handle the tasks in the My NoNNa’s stalls. Poppy serves up party snacks like popcorn, candy floss, corn cups and ice-sticks. For more information on Poppy, please see Appendix B.
For more information on My Nonna’s, visit www.mynonnas.com or www.facebook.com/MyNoNNas
For more information on Cirrus Culinnaire, visit www.cirrusculinnaire.com
Issued on behalf of Cirrus Cullinaire by Affluence Public Relations as a social enterprise project:
For media enquiries, please contact:
Andrea Goh
andrea ( @ ) affluencepr dot com
+65 9049 3818
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