Koha Community Cafe

What is Koha?

“Koha” loosely translates from the Maori language, and describes a reciprocal gift or contribution. With this in mind, it became the name of a wonderful community café based in Yarra Junction in the Upper Yarra Valley – Koha Community Café.

Operating for just over 2 years now and run by volunteers from our community, once a week we serve a scrumptious array of vegetarian mains and desserts, as well as coffee, tea and freshly made chai. Many, many of those who come for a meal have asked for a cookbook or particular recipes so they can cook at home what they have enjoyed at the café.

The Cookbook

It is now the time to share our wonderful chef’s recipes with everyone! The aim is to raise the funds to print Cooking with Koha which will enable us to share how easy and cheaply it can be to cook vegetarian which is also healthy and fresh and never boring.

It will be different too! Our Chef, Fiona Cheron has created beautifully hand drawn borders and written the recipes by hand, which gives it a wonderful old style feel – like handwritten recipes that we passed around or handed down once upon a time.

It will be one of the ways we will raise funds for our café, which aims to be self-sustaining.

About Us

Koha Community Cafe began as a student project around the issues of food security. Based on the “Lentil As Anything” concept, Koha works on the principle of providing an inclusive community environment, which welcomes everyone regardless of economic or social situation.

What people pay for their meal pays for the next week’s meal. Fabulous and hardworking volunteers from our local community operate the café and we pay a part-time chef and assistant to shop, prepare and produce the meals each week.

Our average night sees about 80+ people sharing a meal, catching up with and making new friends and networking and feeling part of their community. As some say, it has become a “social institution” and important for many in an economically, socially and geographically disadvantaged area.

On any given night we can have up to 20 young children coming in with their parents to eat, homeless people, people with disabilities, socially isolated people, young and older individuals and everyone in-between. We also provide a good testing ground for performers singing, playing music or dancing who are all greeted with enthusiasm and encouragement from the diners.

The café is used regularly for small meetings by staff from various organisations, AGM dinners, community group meetings, get-togethers and birthday parties. Importantly, it is as an opportunity for students to do their work placement. We have many students join us, who want to gain on-the-ground experience and these are as diverse as Children’s Services, Hospitality, Community Services, as well as scouts for their Queen’s badges and high school work experience.

Last year we provided Food Safety classes for our volunteers and vegetarian cooking classes for about 30 families who learned to cook 3-course meals, make jams and chutney.

All of this goes to making us a stronger more self-reliant community, looking after each other! Our cookbook will be part of that!

Keeping track of Koha

You can follow our activities and stories on Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Koha-Community-Cafe/323847370751

We will update the progress of this project on our Koha page, as well as on here!