TOAST 2011
This year's Toast cafe moved to Sanctuary 21. It was a great event with loads of different activities each night. Over £300 was raised to support the Youth for Christ trip to Tanzania and also to help the work of the Salvation Army in tackling poverty and homelessness in our area. Photos to follow...
Raise a Toast to Africa - TOAST 2010
This year's TOAST café was a great success, attracting an average of 60 people each night during half term to come and see St Nic's transformed into a youth café. The theme this year was 'Africa' and each night the café had a slightly different focus, highlighting a social issue that affects an African country and encouraging the young people to learn a bit more about it and help raise some money for a good cause.
On the Monday night, the issue of trafficking was raised, especially focusing on the chocolate trade on the Ivory coast where thousands of young children are trafficked, enslaved and abused to harvest the cocoa that makes over a third of the world's chocolate.
Tuesday focused on Tanzania and the 3 week mission trip this summer organised by Durham YFC, where a group of young people are going to serve a community out there. They will be helping to renovate a children's ward in a hospital as part of their trip, and it was great to promote this during the TOAST café.
Wednesday had a football focus, as we started to think about the World Cup heading to South Africa in the summer. As the world descends on Africa, we were thinking about poverty in the country and charities that help provide Sports activities and education in South Africa. This night also featured a football cage which was erected in the marketplace to create a very intensive football competition (won by some of our FROG members!)
Finally, on Thursday, we used some of the Tearfund ‘One Voice’ prayer material to think about world poverty and how we can raise the standard of living for the people of Africa.
Money from the various craft activities, fair-trade tuck shop and competitions throughout the week is to be donated to the Tanzania mission trip in the summer. Over £250 was raised, so this was a great effort.
Of course, a large part of the TOAST café involves young people eating toasties, taking part in creative activities such as nail painting and jewellery making, trying to beat other teams in the ‘big quiz’ or ‘name that tune’ competitions and performing on the main stage – either in groups, bands or solo acts.
The atmosphere was really good and everyone seemed to enjoy themselves! A particular highlight was the ‘Just Dance’ game on the Wii console projected onto the screen, and we managed to get most of the young people joining in with the funky moves each night!
Here’s what some of the young people said:
“It was cool!” Megan
“Many teenagers came together over a toastie, a football cage, wii dance, sofas, fair-trade chocolate and fruit juice!” Lucy
“It was absolutely awesome!” Sam
“It was really good and I enjoyed playing the drums” Tim
“Awesome and they had good music and nice toasties (although I only tried one of them!)” Catherine
“The toasties were yummy and just dance was awesome!” Eleanor
“Best weeks club I’ve been to” Lois