Keep Citizens Advice Edinburgh in Leith

Aim

Help Citizens Advice Edinburgh raise £20,000 to ensure free advice is always available in the local community.

We need to raise £20,000 to help keep Citizens Advice in Leith.  With your support, we can keep this vital service in your community.

Why?

• Citizens Advice Edinburgh is an independant charity.  We are not a government funded agency and only receive 19% of our running costs as a grant from the City of Edinburgh Council. 
• We therefore rely on fundraised income to deliver our services.
• In 2012 a move to larger premises helped us to see 30% more clients in Leith.
• Unfortunately, we can no longer stay in our current premises, because the rent is too much for us to afford.
• To keep this vital service in Leith, we need your support.
• We need to raise £20,000 to help towards the fit out and refurbishment costs of our new home in Dalmeny Street. Located in the heart of Leith Walk, we will be perfectly positioned to continue to meet the needs of the people in Leith and its surrounding communities.

The impact of Citizens Advice in Edinburgh:

• CAE have been providing free, confidential and independent advice to citizens in Edinburgh for over 75 years.
• We now have over 280 local volunteers offering their time, skills and expertise free of charge, to support fellow citizens in need of advice and support.
• Every year we see over 13,000 individual clients and deal with more than 28,000 unique enquiries and 43,000 individual issues.
• In Leith alone, we see more than 5,000 clients every year.
• We can only achieve this because of the support we receive from our  280 dedicatedvolunteers who give their time, skills and expertise free of charge to support fellow citizens in need.
• Employment, Money Advice and Welfare Entitlement are among the three most common issues for which people need our advice.
• We help clients to resolve these issues.  In 2015, our clients achieved over £3 million  in financial gain as a result of our advice.
• Thats an additional £3 millon going back into the local community.
• In Leith alone, we supported clients to achieve over £208,000 in financial gain.
• Citizens Advice is the only universally available, free, confidential and impartial advice provider in Edinburgh. 
• With your help we can provide the right, accessable environment for our team of volunteers to continue to meet the needs of up to 5,000 citizens in Leith every year.

Our History:

Citizens Advice Edinburgh has come a long way since we were founded in 1939. For over 75 years we have worked tirelessly to ensure Edinburgh residents always have access to advice when they need it, on virtually any topic. In 2016 we now operate from five local Bureaux and 25 outreach sites across the city, supporting over 28,000 local residents every year with free, independent, impartial and confidential advice.

As a charity, one of our core beliefs is that advice needs to be free for everyone, so that there are no barriers to people accessing the advice and support they need.  We therefore depend on the generosity and support of donations and grants from the community. 

In the last year, our funding has decreased, but costs and demand for our services continue to rise. A ciritcal element of this was the fact that we could no longer afford the rent to stay in our current premises in Leith.  Knowing how vital this service is to the local community, we have worked hard to secure a suitable and affordable alternative, but we need your help to make this happen.

We need to raise £20,000 toKeep this vital Citizens Advice service in Leith.

A Community Charity:

Citizens Advice Edinburgh is volunteer led charity, with only a small team of paid staff. We benefit from the support of over 280 dedicated volunteers from all sections of society in a broad range of roles. We are immensely grateful not only for the support of these volunteers, but from the support from receive from local partners and our generous supporters. 

With your help, we can provide the right, accessible environment for our team of dedicated volunteers to continue to achieve these fantastic results.

Our services improve the safety and wellbeing of everyone in Leith.  We also help support the local economy by millions of pounds every year.  Please help to keep this vital service in your community.

This project successfully funded on 13th October 2016