This tube station coffee shop trains homeless to be baristas

According to TfL, roughly 25,000 people enter or exit Goodge Street tube station on a single weekday.

What better place to set up a coffee shop and who better to staff it than the homeless.

It may be small (in fact, only a single window) but oh it is mighty.

Change Please is a social enterprise which supports homeless people by training them to become baristas: providing them with income for food and shelters and giving them that initial job to help them onto the job ladder.

The coffee shops were set up by FCB Inferno, Old Spike Roastery and The Big Issue in a bid to tackle the capitals homelessness crisis.

The organisation not only provides a job that pays the London Living Wage but also helps find accommodation and tackle mental health difficulties which are highly prevalent in the homeless population.

Crisis in December last year found London accounted for 25 per cent of the nation’s homeless population, with 6,180 people on the streets or sleeping on public transport.

This initiative shows something as simple as a cup of coffee can do so much good.

Founder Cemal Ezel told the Independent “We want to be the fourth-biggest coffee chain in the UK. We’re not holding back,”. Starbucks and Costa, watch this space!

Change Please has locations at Goodge Street Station, Clapham Common Station, Borough Market, Canary Wharf, Here East, London Bridge and New Oxford Street. You can even support this heart-warming initiative by buying Change Please coffee from national chains such as Sainsbury’s.

h/t Londonist

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