Grant for Yarmouth cafe

TWO enterprising mums are being helped towards opening a child-friendly caf� where grown-ups can meet for a coffee while their little ones are occupied with activities and toys.

TWO enterprising mums are being helped towards opening a child-friendly caf� where grown-ups can meet for a coffee while their little ones are occupied with activities and toys.

Dawn Webster, 29, and Lisa Smith, 38, have been awarded �5,285 from the Big Lottery Fund.

The pair, who met on a “feelgood” course at Gorleston's Seagulls Centre, were fired up by their own experience of trying to chat with children in tow but are planning a facility with broader benefits in the caf� at St James's Church healthy living centre which closed amid much discontent.

Miss Webster said the Family Den Caf� would operate as a social enterprise which would host activities like a book club and pen-pal club, arts and crafts, and a kiddies' corner.

They aim to open on January 4 but hope to stage some Christmas events in December. Miss Webster said local people were backing the scheme and had missed the caf� since it had closed.

“We are just normal women, not businesswomen,” she said. “But doing the course at Seagulls enabled me to meet Lisa and gave us both the self- confidence to do this. We started going there to get our babies weighed and were asked to join the course which covers things like stress management and we had a make-over.”

In future, the scheme may provide job and work experience opportunities for adults with special needs in conjunction with Yarmouth College.