Quaker Vegetarian Café

Opening times: 10:00 to 18:00, August 10th-29th 2008 (except Sundays). View 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.

This year’s charities

All our profits go to charity. Each year the Quaker Festival Committee supports three small registered charities which work in at least one of the following areas: social service, ecological, a Majority World nation, Scotland. In recent years we have supported each charity to an amount in excess of £1000 per year.

Alternatives to Violence Project (Scotland)

Alternatives to Violence Project is a world-wide network of organisations promoting a non-violent society where we all live in peace and dignity.  The Alternatives to Violence Project (AVP) Scotland is a cross-border charity, affiliated to AVP Britain.  It supports the delivery of workshops for people who want to find ways of handling conflict without using, or being the victim of, violence.  AVP Scotland holds workshops in HM Prison Kilmarnock and in the community, in Edinburgh and Glasgow.

The workshops, facilitated by trained volunteers, draw on people's own experiences and definitions of violence, using group exercises, activities and discussions to explore non-violent ways of working with conflict.

AVP Scotland is a volunteer-based organisation, seeking funding to employ a development worker and administrator, so that it can extend its work in developing alternatives to violence.

Registered Charity No. SC0398287 

Hlekweni Friends Rural Service

Hlekweni is a rural training centre near Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, which specialises in bio-intensive agriculture, also offering training courses in carpentry, building, metalwork, early childhood education and care, sewing and garment making.  It was founded over forty years ago by Quakers, and offers a holistic experience, sharing values of integrity, cooperation and compassion.  Quakers also support Samathonga School on the Hlekweni campus through a regular feeding scheme, and provision of educational supplies.  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; Hlekweni offers courses at the centre, and increasingly in rural areas.  Hlekweni's hands-on training helps more Zimbabweans to start small businesses and grow food.  The centre has a part to play in a political climate in which respect for human dignity continues to diminish amidst increasing poverty and hardship exacerbated by the onslaught of AIDS, cholera and the breakdown of the civil infrastructure.  There is a UK charity, Friends of Hlekweni.  Read more on the Hlekweni Friends Rural Service website.

Friends of Hlekweni - UK registered charity No. 1126698

Comann Na Mara (Society of the Sea)

Comann na Mara (Society of the Sea) is a charity, founded in 2000, based on Lochmaddy, North Uist with the aim of establishing an aquatic education and research centre.  North Uist, population c.1200, lies halfway south in the Outer Hebrides (Na h-Eileanan Siar), comprising the island chain off the west coast of Scotland.

Lochmaddy Bay (Loch nam Madadh) has been awarded European status of a Special Area of Conservation.  The Bay has qualities that are exceptional and, in some respects, unique in Europe, so the area merits special stewardship as well as providing a vast area for education and research programmes.  A particular feature is the tidal structure, which gives low spring tide in daylight all the year round, enabling fore-shore studies to be continued in winter as opposed to some centres, further south, where there is no adequate shore access in winter daylight.

Comann na Mara hope to provide an eco-friendly building as a base for scientific research and for public education.

Registered Charity No. SC032295

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.