The building which has been our home since 2002 has to now be purchased in order to guarantee our long term survival. The landlord needs to sell. We want to continue to run the drop-in centre to provide a warm, secure, cheerful and bright place for members of the community to meet.
Many otherwise lonely, people come here to enjoy friendly company, have a safe place to pass time and to obtain basic refreshments or access to our extensive library of donated books at nominal prices. We have over 100 regular visitors.
We will use the donations to close our funding gap of £5000 and to provide a further £5000 to cover increased costs while we transform the charity to run as owner-occupier rather than under lease.
We have paid a £15000 non-refundable deposit to secure the purchase on favourable terms, and we have been granted the offer of a £130,000 mortgage loan by the Charity Bank. In order to complete the deal we are fundraising to pay the £5000 left to complete the sale. We must us invest to improve the energy efficiency of the building.
Our plans for the future include the restarting of our Local History group, the return of our opening hours to those pre-Covid and to develop a range of other activity and support classes. Volunteers have started setting up a community garden at the rear of our shop.
We host a number of groups supporting wellbeing and occupational therapy.
