Season’s Greeting from the St Augustine’s Welcome Café
16 December 2025
Thank you, Calderdale!
It’s a dark and gloomy winter’s day in Halifax but the St Augustine’s kitchen is a warm, steamy cauldron of smells and tastes from Senegal and Syria.
St Augustine’s is Calderdale’s only specialist centre working with refugees and people seeking asylum, and at the heart of our centre is the Welcome Café. It’s entirely staffed by volunteers and it provides 1000 free meals every month!
Today, four of our amazing centre members are working with volunteer Antonia to prepare hundreds of sweets and pastries.
The sweets will be a thank-you gift to the people of Calderdale who have done so much to support our work over the last year. We want to say thank you because St Augustine’s simply would not exist without our amazing Calderdale Community.
Thank you because…
Thank you because… our centre is powered by a vast army of hundreds of volunteers – ordinary people who want to show that refugees and people seeking asylum are welcome and valued in our community.
Thank you because… our frontline services are delivered in partnership with a range of voluntary and statutory organisations from across the borough who bring their expertise and their compassion to this vital work.
Thank you because… our lights and heating are kept on – and our kitchen is kept stocked – via generous donations from individual people, schools and companies from Brighouse to Todmorden, Halifax to Hebden Bridge.
So – thank you Calderdale!
Thank you for standing with St Augustine’s, and with people seeking sanctuary in our borough, throughout 2025.
And thank you for the support we know you will give us in 2026.
Come and try some Syrian and Senegalese Sweets!
If you’d like to taste some of Bousso, Narin, Warda and Kawther’s delicious sweets – come down to Hebden Bridge Market from 8.30 am – 2.30 pm on Thursday 18th December.
You can have a chat with some of our Trustees about ways to get involved with the centre, and take away a ‘Refugees Welcome Here’ poster to show that we all have more in common than divides us.
If it goes well, we’re hoping that Hebden Bridge will be just the first of a series of ‘pop-up’ stalls across Calderdale in 2026.
If you would like to support our work – please sign up to our newsletter by clicking ‘Subscribe’ at the top of our Home Page or donate HERE.
What’s cooking in the Welcome Café Kitchen?
Antonia, who runs Antonia’s Supper Club, is one of our regular Welcome Café volunteers. Here she spills the beans on the delicious delights in store for Hebden Bridge Market;
“Bousso, Narin, Kawther, Warda and I came together at the St Augustine’s kitchen to cook 4 different sweet dishes including; Beignets from Senegal, Basbousa (a semolina cake topped with coconut and pistachio, popular in North Africa and the Middle East , Layali Lubnana (originating from Lebanon) and coconut caramel balls.
We baked the cakes for Basbousa, set the cream for Lavali Lubnana, and fried the balls of dough in hot oil to make the beignets. Bousso also worked very hard cracking open all the coconuts by hand, whilst Warda grated them all.
Kawther and Bousso led the way showing us how to make their dishes and we worked hard all day to make these different sweet treats for people to enjoy at the market!
This wonderful group of women also work in the Welcome Cafe nearly every week so they know the kitchen like the back of their hands and it was such fun working together like family, teaching each other recipes which mean so much to us, we all left with big smiles.”
Allergens:
- Beignets: Wheat (flour), Dairy, Eggs
- Layali Lubnana: Dairy, Eggs, Nuts (pistachio), Wheat (semolina)
- Basbousa: Wheat (semolina, flour), Eggs, Dairy, Coconut on top
More about the Welcome Café
You can find out more about the Welcome Café here. And don’t forget it’s open to EVERYONE Mondays and Thursdays at 12.30 pm. We do close for Xmas and some other holidays so do check the website first.