An Okehampton-based community group celebrated a donation of £1,000 overall from two West Devon Borough Councillors recently at its weekly coffee morning.

Support group, Community Links, which provides a wide range of services to familes and individuals in the Okehampton area, recently received £500 from both Cllr Lois Samuel and Cllr James McInnes and decided to thank the councillors at its regular coffee morning for the isolated and lonely in the area.

Cllr Samuel attended the event on February 17 at Refresh Cafe in Okehampton where Community Links staff, volunteers and clients were able to thank her. Cllr McInnes was unable to attend.

Cllr Samuel said: ‘[This cafe] is a great space. I’m excited to fund this project. It’s wonderful and really helping people.’

Community Links provides a wide range of support services to families and individuals across the Okehampton area with one of the most successful being the befriending service which provides people suffering with loneliness and isolation an opportunity to socialise and meet new people.

Befriending coordinator Vicky Hopkins explained that this service had become especially important since and outbreak of the pandemic and numerous lockdowns over the past two years.

As part of the befriending service, clients are able to attend a weekly coffee morning at Refresh Cafe where they can meet others suffering with isolation and chat with volunteers who befriend attendees on a one-to-one basis.

The coffee morning has proved to be such a success that the group were forced to move to from the Okehampton cafe, Toast where it originally met to a larger location. The not-for-profit cafe, Refresh, used by Okehampton’s New Life Church, offered the group a regular space to meet up.

Community Links director, Mary Lovell, said: ‘We are really really grateful [for the donation]. It’s allowed us to fund the move from Toast to [Refresh Cafe] and having the extra space is really good.

‘A lot of people like having something to do each day and I think it’s nice to know and just drop in.’

However, Ms Lovell said that the group was short on volunteers and was currently struggling to provide transport to those unable to attend the coffee morning by themselves.

The community interest group, which also provides parenting courses, family support, counselling sessions, and organises mental health groups across Okehampton, hopes that the money from the two councillors will help it to expand its services even further.

So far, Community Links has already organised a social group to support people suffering from dementia and has worked with Devon Carers to set up a support group, named A Time for You, to give full-time unpaid carers a break.