The activities of Slice of Life Australia (SOLA) in the Shoalhaven are well known, through their catering at the Worrigee Lawn Cemetery café Reflections, their shop in North Nowra and their training kitchen and gardens.
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But the wider social benefits of the enterprise was illustrated when founder Karen Anstiss and young worker Ally McClenan spoke to the audience at the Shoalhaven Women’s Conference.
While SOLA largely benefits intellectually disabled people, staff and volunteers are gaining just as much from the organisation.
Eighty-seven-year-old Alan was depressed and at a loose end after the death of his wife.
To make matters worse, he found himself in a situation where he could no longer have his own garden.
When he learned that SOLA was hoping to establish a community garden at Terara, he began bringing seedlings into the North Nowra shop.
Karen Anstiss decided to give Alan free rein in the yard at the back of the shop on Ilaroo Road.
Now the yard is full of plants and vegetables and young workers and volunteers are benefitting from Alan’s gardening knowledge and green thumb.
The produce grown in the garden is used in the kitchen or sold in the shop and just as importantly, Alan has regained his passion and purpose in life.
What started in 2006 with two hearing impaired volunteers has grown to an organisation with 24 workers with a high ratio of people who would otherwise be excluded from the workforce.
It was Karen’s own mother’s struggle with anxiety and depression that planted the first seeds of SOLA. Now both her parents are active volunteers in the organisation.
Young worker, Ally, proudly and confidently told the crowd how she works in the shop serving customers and making milkshakes, and how she has learned to make slice in the kitchen.
“I’m learning at the moment to use the coffee machine, and I do cleaning,” she said.
The group has also recently taken on providing catering at the new sub-acute mental health facility at Nowra, so the patients don’t have to have frozen food.
Karen said the growth of SOLA had been organic and her own family had been her greatest support.
“I’m not wonder woman. There are lots of people behind the scenes who help.”
