AN ENTREPRENEURIAL York mum has set up a café for parents outside school to raise money for Sue Ryder care charity.

Rachel How took up the Sue Ryder entrepreneurial challenge in which teams are given £50 to launch fundraising initiatives. Rachel was inspired to take part in the challenge after her mother died in the Sue Ryder Manorlands Hospice, near Keighley, earlier this year.

“My mum went into Manorlands Hospice at the end of November last year. She had a form of blood cancer and we didn’t think she’d see Christmas, but she was so well looked after and so at peace that she kept going until February 1. The ten weeks that mum was at the hospice was just so wonderful, I can’t sing the hospice’s praises enough.”

Rachel set up a “Pop-Up Caff” which sells cakes, donated by fellow parents, and hot drinks, donated by the Yorkshire Food Company in Micklegate and the Spurriergate Centre, outside Scarcroft School, York, on Mondays and Fridays. She said: “I have stood in the play area so many times after school and said with other mums how much money you could make if you had a cafe here! We have so far taken well over £200 for Sue Ryder.”

Rachel’s team mates Vicky Pendry, a teacher at St Barnabas’, and Emma James, who works for City of York Council, have also been selling their homemade damson, blackberry and sloe gin at school fairs in York.