Ladywood café – Justin

“Food breaks down barriers between cultures”

Justin

Justin is a cool guy who loves music and designs his own clothes range called ‘dream n achieve’. Before moving to the area, he lived in Canada for 20 years where his family still are. Being so far away from family can be isolating at times and Justin regularly enjoys coming to our Ladywood Café to find community and conversation. An added bonus is the freshly cooked food.

Justin first heard about The Real Junk Food Project Birmingham from Ann, volunteer coordinator, who he met at his child’s school. He liked the idea of the project and has since become a regular customer. At the café, Justin started meeting people from the local area and made some friends. They support each other when they have bad days and enjoy the good days.

The pay as you feel (payf) concept at our café was new to Justin who works two jobs in industrial cleaning and food preparation usually late at night and early in the morning. His clothing business is currently a side project Justin runs not for profit. He just wants people to like his clothes, but he does not want to profit from them.

Justin is not on social media and feels that face to face conversations with people is so much more real than pretending to be someone else on Facebook. The TRJFPBrum café at Ladywood community centre enables him to have those real conversations and he loves to tell his friends about TRJFPBrum. He asked why Ladywood was not open 5 days a week instead of only Wednesdays to Fridays.

We want to thank Justin for his regular financial contribution to our project and for his time to speak with us. Without cash we can’t pay for our sharehouse, where we store food donations, and the van we use to transport the food.