Clients at an Oswestry Day Opportunity centre have said thanks to the town’s community kitchen OsNosh by making a new piece of equipment for the new OsNosh roof garden.

Shropshire Council has been working with Paul Newman of the Be a Better Fish organisation to give adults with learning disabilities the chance of new experiences and opportunities including spending time at the OsNosh community kitchen.

Clients also attend the Avalon Day Opportunities Centre in Oswestry and Maesbury Metals where they can learn metal and woodworking skills.

For the past 12 months staff and service users from Avalon and Maesbury Metals join the team at Osnosh every Friday serving at the Osnosh foodshare tables and helping in the kitchen.

Paul Newman said that it also gave service users the chance to socialise in the inclusive atmosphere at OsNosh.

“As a result Maesbury Metals offered to help the service users build some items for the new OsNosh community garden as a way of saying thank you for the welcome they received at OsNosh.

“They made a fabulous cloche for the terraced roof garden – and there’s more to come,” said Paul.

Claire Jones of Shropshire Council which manages both the Avalon and Maesbury Metals Day Opportunity Centres said that volunteering sessions at OsNosh had been a rewarding experience for the staff and service users.

“Our aim is to offer new experience and opportunities for our service users and volunteering at OsNosh has been a very rewarding way of supporting them to work alongside other volunteers and customers. We were delighted to be able to give something back by making the garden equipment,” she said.

OsNosh community interest company, based at The Centre in Oak Street, Oswestry, uses food that is destined to go to waste to create healthy well-balanced meals. The surplus food is donated by the local community, food producers and businesses.

The group runs twice weekly food share sessions at its community kitchens at The Centre on Wednesday and Fridays where hot take away meals are served from 11.30am.

The OsNosh team, which includes up to 10 volunteers each day, is also currently developing a community garden at The Centre to give local people the chance to grow their own food and provide fresh produce for the community kitchen.

Elliot Bastos of OsNosh said that wooden cloche would be a very useful addition in the new garden at The Centre.

“Our community garden will reinforce the OsNosh message of fighting food poverty and inequality as well as preventing food waste. The fact that this equipment has been made by people who have played a part in delivering that ethos is really important to OsNosh. So we would like to say a big thank you to the services users and Maesbury Metals for thinking of us,” he said.

Further information about OsNosh can be found at https://osnosh.co.uk/ or on Facebook at OsNosh – Oswestry Community Kitchen.

Pictured: Darren Roberts (left) of Maesbury Metals presents the first cloche to Elliot Bastos of OsNosh.