Helping the Homeless

The Social Bite café chain has provided homeless people with jobs and food for six years, and now it’s giving them something just as important: a place to live.

The nonprofit, which operates five shops and a restaurant in Scotland, is opening a village this month with 11 new houses in the country’s capital, Edinburgh. The first five of up to 20 people are now moving in. It “will provide support and enable folks to rebuild their lives,” said Scottish communities minister Angela Constance at the village’s opening ceremony. It’s just one of Social Bite’s many charitable acts: It distributed nearly 100,000 items of food last year and engages with more than 300 homeless people per week.

“It is a beautiful community environment that’s been created here.”

— Social Bite’s Josh Littlejohn