Yash Charitable Trust, an initiative to help differently-abled people, opened Cafe Arpan in Mumbai’s Juhu area on Sunday.
The cafe, which remains open from 8 am to 8 pm, has its own delivery system where the staff entirely with developmental disabilities take orders and make burgers, coffee and pizzas by themselves. With a staff of 13 workers, they also have their own delivery system.
One of the specially-abled staffs, Anand said, “It’s fun working here, my parents are in Qatar I work here.”
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Sushama Nagarkar, trustee of Yash Charitable Trust said that initially, it was a bit difficult to create an understanding between the staff and the customers, but gradually, with the help of understanding customers, it became easy for the staffs to run the cafe smoothly.
“The vision and mission of Yash Charitable Trust started in 2014 was to bring the people with developmental disability into the mainstream community. In 2015, we started a ‘Dabba service’ and included people with a developmental disability. We realised that these people have a lot of potential but they cease to get opportunities. Hence we started this cafe as another project to help these people,” Nagarkar added.
The customers have lauded the initiative and appreciated the cafe for helping the differently-abled people with job opportunities.