Mouth-watering pop-up Firth School café raises £500 for WaterAid

Staff and P4/5 children at Firth School held a mouth-watering community local produce café on Friday last week – which went down a treat with the wider community and raised £500 for WaterAid.

Thanks to the generosity of local businesses who donated products for use, the youngsters, with the help of staff, were able to offer up Orkney beef burgers, beremeal and Orkney cheese pizza, Humes smoked salmon salad, cheesecake and Orkney ice-cream, traybakes and Orkney Roastery coffee.

Families of pupils came along to sample the goods on offer.

P4/5 class teacher Lucy Clements said the idea for the event started from a trio of pupils who approached the Head Teacher with an idea to raise money by selling beads.

Miss Clements said: “This then developed into painting rocks, then finally into creating a local produce cafe to celebrate Orcadian produce, linking to our topic this term of food and farming. We looked at the charity WaterAid as part of our topic, and the pupils thought this would be a good charity to raise money for.

“The pupils researched local businesses and composed emails to them explaining our plan to use local foods in our own menu to celebrate Orkney food and also to raise money for WaterAid.

“The pupils were delighted when they started to receive responses, and we worked together on menu planning, creating decorations and table covers, deciding on jobs and roles they could undertake, dealing with money and change, and also considering safety and how they could work as a team. We made Beremeal pizzas with mature Orkney cheddar, cheesecakes with JP Orkney tablet, and bannocks with Barony Mill flour. Many life skills involved!

“Our cafe was a great success, with many dishes selling out! It was great to see so many family members back in school. We have raised £500 for WaterAid, which is a fantastic achievement!

“We donated any unopened food to the Community Fridge so others could also benefit.”

The businesses who donated products were: JP Orkney, Barony Mill, Eviedale Bakehouse, Leigh's, Humes, Orkney Isles Preserves, JW Gray, Orkney Ice Cream, Kirkness and Gorie, Orkney Sourdough, Stockans, The Orkney Roastery, Burnside Cheese, Birsay Bay Tearoom.