M&S Oban

Soroba Young Family Group is a nursery based in the heart of the Soroba Community in Oban. Housed in a converted ground floor flat, the Nursery has now been in operation for over 30 years. We are a registered charity (Charity Number: SC041375) and provide ELC for children aged 2-5 years. We are situated in a low SIMD area meaning our families and service users are more likely to feel financial deprivation. We provide high quality learning experiences and individual learning Plans tailored to suit children’s individual needs and stages of development in accordance with a Curriculum for Excellence, the Pre-birth to Three document and Realising the Ambition-Being Me. This ensures we can support children in maximising their potential to become Successful learners, Responsible Citizens, Confident Individuals and Effective communicators. In addition to providing ELC we also provide self funded 2 year old spaces and have a wrap around care option available for all children. Having the option of wrap around care has been particularly helpful in supporting our working families, single parent families and families participating in further educational studies. We provide support to families from our local and wider community including a wide range of families from diverse cultural and socioeconomic backgrounds. Such as- single parent families, families with health related issues and refugee families. We provide funded 2 year old spaces for children this parents meet the financial criteria and Funded early learning and childcare is also available to those aged 2 or over who are (or have been at any point since turning 2) either; looked after by a local council, the subject of a kinship care order, a child with a parent-appointed guardian or with a parent who has experience of care. Our children have access to a wide range of high quality learning experiences to support their holistic development. We have a strong focus on outdoor play and community partnerships including a longstanding partnership with a local elderly care home that we visit on a weekly basis to promote intergenerational work. We work with our local leisure centre who visit our setting and have provided outreach coaches for our children to participate in football, gymnastics and multisport classes. This ensures equity within out setting and allows all our children to experience activities, games and sports to support health and wellbeing regardless of family or financial circumstances. Once a term our setting facilitates a 'Community Swap Shop' where we collect household items, clothes, baby items, toys or books. We then redistribute this within the community for free.

Hope Kitchen (SCIO SC04177) is an Oban-based charity, currently comprising of New Hope Cafe, Green Shoots Community Garden and is the lead partner for the Re_Store Charity Shop (which includes the Rescued Food Hub). The New Hope Café is open six days a week, offering a vegan homemade soup, plus a daily special of toasties, jacket potatoes, sandwiches or similar. It also hosts an evening meal every Tuesday and Friday. Where possible ingredients used to prepare the food come from surplus food donations from local supermarket partners including Tesco, M&S Food, Bookers, Lidl and Aldi. Hope Kitchen also has been running regular cooking courses over the last year to encourage attendees to enjoy cooking, and to cook more regularly for themselves using cost-effective recipes. This has developed into a weekly community dinner where those attending contribute towards making the dinner, and then eat together family style. A food parcel service is for anyone experiencing financial difficulties, it accepts self-referrals or referrals from local organisations. Grocery donations are gratefully received from the public, organisations such as local churches and via donation baskets in Tesco, Lidl and Aldi.

We have a number of projects running in Glencoe and Kinlochleven: Summer Camp for primary aged children Breakfast for All at Kinlochleven 3-18 campus Cafe Kinloch hot lunch for teenagers Open Church for all Seasonal Spirituality for all ages Sing Together - all ages Storytime for younger children Friday Social for 16-24 year olds Each activity includes food and drink and is free to all without judgement in an attempt to reduce the effect of food poverty on the whole community. As part of the mission work of the church we aim to support everybody who needs it by offering St Mary's, Glencoe as a Warm Welcome Space 11-2 every Thursday, all year round. At this Open Church there are hot drinks, soup and sweet treats and it has proved a great place for people to gather, reducing loneliness and isolation as well as helping people to be warm and fed. We work alongside the Kinlochleven 3-18 Campus to provide Breakfast for All which offers a healthy meal free of charge to all pupils. This ensures that everybody has a positive start to each school day and is reaching all families without any need to apply for help. The teachers are reporting that pupils are enjoying the food and are coming to class on time and ready to learn. Cafe Kinloch is run with the same mission, providing a hot lunch to pupils and staff from Kinlochleven 3-18 campus, and from 12-4 every Tuesday during term time we offer a warm welcome space to the whole community. Activities for younger primary aged children locally are limited mostly to sport, so for Storytime we open up our church to families to gather for an hour after school once a week for snack and craft for the children and hot drinks for parents. Summer Camp 2022 & 2023 were very popular with up to twelve children taking part in a variety of activities including orienteering, clay modelling, dance, art and cooking. We plan to return for 2024 and offer Summer Camp for up to twelve children aged 9-12, Monday-Friday, 10-2. During this week the children will prepare lunch for the group each day. Seasonal Spirituality is an open conversation around a campfire on a Saturday afternoon quarterly, where we discuss faith and extend an invitation to the whole community to join in with family friendly activities and share food. Each session has a different theme such as Earth Day, Colour, Love or Water and we have included a range of art and craft activities to match. All of our activities are run with the support of generous donations to ensure that nobody feels excluded.