Quaker Parrot Café

Menu

Edinburgh Quakers have run a café during the Fringe every year since 1989. As well as providing wholesome vegetarian food for our visitors, we aim to heighten awareness of local and international charities.

The café is open from 10 am for light breakfast, drinks and snacks. Cooked meals and salads are available from 12 noon until 5 pm. All our food is prepared on the premises by volunteer staff and members of our community. All food served is vegetarian, with vegan options usually available. We use only free-range eggs and serve organic and fairly-traded food and drinks wherever this is practicable.

We try to keep our prices reasonable but all the profit we make (including tips), from both the café and the theatre operation, go to charitable work.

Why Quaker Parrot? The breed of parrot called ‘Quakers' is better know in the USA, where some people keep them as pets. We think they are so called because they are comparatively plain in colouring (usually grey or green) and Quakers in earlier days were known for wearing plain dress, often grey, as part of our witness to equality. Elisabeth Fry, the Quaker prison reformer, got into trouble with her Meeting for wearing red!

This year’s charities

All our profits go to charity. This year these are The Quaker Cape Town Peace Centre, Hlekweni Friends Rural Service, Reforesting Scotland and the work of Quakers in this country and abroad.

The Cape Town Quaker Peace Centre

The Quaker Peace Centre in Cape Town, founded in 1988 and supported by Quakers in Britain, is a team of Peacemakers working mainly in townships in the Western Cape Province to help people towards a way of life which encourages the creative, non-violent resolution of conflict through promoting awareness, co-operation and empowerment. It works with young people in prison, in local schools and with projects seeking to reduce the impact of HIV/Aids. Read more on the Cape Town Quaker Peace Centre website.

Hlekweni Friends Rural Service

Hlekweni is a rural training centre near Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, which specialises in bio-intensive agriculture, but also offering training courses in technical and domestic subjects. It claims its ‘first business is people', where ‘education is for living, not for jobs'. Within an unstable political climate and the problems of a divided country, it tries to be a ray of hope where such things as race, religion and standard of education are unimportant. Almost all training includes a strong basis in agriculture, and where possible is taken to the people at their homes. In a context of extreme natural resource depletion, Hlekweni is trying to encourage environmentally sustainable entrepreneurial skills. The importance of training in small-scale sustainable rural agriculture is at a premium in a country where food shortages have resulted from the collapse of the agricultural sector. In today's Zimbabwe, where for more and more people self-employment is the only option, Hlekweni is needed as much as ever. It has a part to play in a climate in which respect for human dignity continues to diminish amidst increasing poverty and hardship exacerbated by the onslaught of AIDS. Read more on the Hlekweni Friends Rural Service website.

Reforesting Scotland

Scotland has lost 98% of its natural native forest, with many associated plants and animals now locally extinct. The vision of Reforesting Scotland, a small Edinburgh-based charity, is to transform our deforested land back to a landscape with a mosaic of ecologically healthy and productive forests and well managed farmland. It aims to raise awareness and promote understanding of the deforestation of Scotland and its implications in ecological, social and economic terms, to develop community participation in ecological restoration, forest management and integrated land use, to promote sustainable forest culture and economy in a well-forested land and to place the Scottish forestry situation in an international context and take action in support of forests and their people worldwide. Read more on the Reforesting Scotland website.

Quaker work in Britain and abroad

Quakers are active in work for peace and justice and reconciliation and relief work both in this country and around the world. As a relatively small and non-hierarchical organisation, much of our work is done on a voluntary basis, but we also employ staff both to administer our work and to deliver it. Religiously, we are a non-evangelical, open and tolerant community, believing that actions speak louder than words.