Expanding Cherishers Community Enterprise

Who we are

Cherishers 811 CIC is rooted in rural Staffordshire and provides care and support in that area. We empower the Elderly & Disabled to stay active while living with a disability.  We respond to the community needs by providing focused care, community food, and sports therapy activities for free, on demand

We support individuals who face multiple financial challenges, including food insecurity, physical/mental health issues and then provide food that can be used for themselves, for our lunch club, for our warm room and also as food parcels for the broader community.

What we want to do next & Why are we crowdfunding?

Cherishers 811 CIC aims to expand its services to provide essential Community Cost of Living support, including meeting/ training rooms and a community kitchen.

• Demand for our services has surged by 150% in the past year, necessitating expansion.
• Enhancing infrastructure with new meeting and training rooms, alongside a community kitchen, will bolster trading income to fund free community events.
• Refurbishing our premises is crucial to accommodating a growing number of patrons and serving the community effectively.
• We provide vital support through initiatives like lunch clubs, therapy classes, and financial management assistance, especially given governmental support withdrawals and rising living expenses.
• Our community-led ethos prioritises support for disabled individuals and those from lower socio-economic backgrounds.
• Despite a 65% increase in operational costs in 2023, we are committed to fair wages and disability-confident employment practices.
• Our recent expansion allows us to accommodate up to 80 individuals, offering nourishing meals and therapeutic activities.
• Untapped potential lies in renovating four unused rooms into training and meeting spaces for specialised programs.
• Through a dedicated carers training room and community kitchen, we aim to empower community members with skills and dignity.
• Our vision includes a weekly Community Meals service providing 100 nutritious meals to those facing food insecurity and hiring out the community kitchen for collaboration and resource-sharing.
• Cherishers 811 CIC seeks to expand its impact, foster resilience, empowerment, and a brighter future for all through strategic investments in infrastructure and programming.

How we’ll spend the money raised

£30k to renovate 4 rooms including complete upgrade of electric, plumbing and heating, décor, flooring etc,

£13k to purchase commercial kitchen equipment including 2 new commercial range ovens and hobs, a commercial dishwasher, kitchen food preparation equipment including wipe clean surfaces. Kitchen storage space for pans, knives etc. 

£5k Carry out general kitchen refurbishments including renovation, and equipment installation, 

£2k Put money towards promotional activities like e-marketing, social media, design & printing of posters & leaflets to promote our services and events.  

These investments will then enable us to develop, diversify and expand our social outreach work to help even more people in our community.

The impact of having the new rooms will be incredible -  this will increase our physical activity delivery by 300% whereby on a weekly basis, we will be able to host up to 10 off 1-2-1 Personal Training and Sports Therapy opportunities with the support of our sports therapist. We can only host 2-3 sessions currently but when we do this, we also have the large room focused on this activity and no other therapy activities so the benefit is 2-fold as it will also reduce our heating bills for keeping the space warmer for sports therapy activities.

What we will do with our new space

Converting the additional four rooms into training and meeting spaces while also accommodating personal sports training sessions for individuals with significant disabilities offers several benefits for Cherishers:

Tailored Support:

• Personal training sessions offer a highly personalised approach to fitness and skill development.
• Individuals with significant disabilities require specific adaptations and one-on-one support, which may not be feasible in group settings.
• Tailoring support to each individual's unique needs increases the ability to offer sports therapies to those most removed from current access.

Comfort and Confidence:

• Many individuals with disabilities may feel uncomfortable or overwhelmed in group settings.
• Personal training sessions provide a more intimate and supportive environment, boosting comfort and confidence in engaging in physical activity.
• Offering these sessions free of charge removes financial and physical barriers to participation.

Increased Accessibility:

• Personal training sessions allow for greater flexibility in scheduling and accommodating specific needs.
• Factors such as accessibility requirements, timing preferences, and individualised exercise programs can be addressed.

By offering personalised sessions within a smaller space, Cherishers ensures equal access to fitness opportunities for all, regardless of disability or support needs

Improved Engagement and Progress:

• Personal training sessions provide focused attention on individual goals, progress, and challenges.
• This personalised approach increases engagement, motivation, and leads to better outcomes.
• Trainers can modify exercises, offer hands-on assistance, and provide continuous encouragement.

Enhanced Inclusivity:

• Offering personal training sessions alongside group activities promotes inclusivity and diversity.
• Cherishers' commitment to meeting the unique needs of all individuals fosters a culture of acceptance and empowerment.

Everyone feels valued and supported in their fitness journey, regardless of abilities or limitations.

Our sports therapy, green therapy and wellbeing room activities are provided free, regardless of ability.

By having additional smaller sports spaces we will further unite our community by increasing our space for diverse sports activities.

Overall, incorporating personal training sessions for individuals with significant disabilities into our facility's offerings will not only provides essential support and accommodation but also will promote a more inclusive and supportive environment where everyone can thrive and succeed in their fitness goals.

Room for private financial support

We are renovating rooms to provide private spaces for therapies and financial advice sessions as well as helping with internet banking. Our large room is not appropriate for financially sensitive conversations or to have conversations about finance, grants or community support especially for those disabled or hard of hearing. Some patrons are domestic abuse victims who need specialised support and have never been allowed to manage their own money. We provide the space and tools to be independent.

Our -in community shop supports around 60 people each day with everything from accessing internet banking, grant and government benefits, and the cost of living crisis.

By renovating small rooms we will provide a place of privacy to have sensitive discussions especially for those with disabilities / hard of hearing.

We provide emergency food parcels, debt advice, support with accessing benefits, and internet internet access to improve communication /remove isolation as well as befriending and therapies

Our plans

We have ambitious plans for 2024 – we already collect and return participants to their homes with our specially adapted vehicles.

• To have private training facilities so sports therapy can be delivered 1-2-1
• To provide private spaces for individual and small group personal training / sports therapy for those not comfortable in group settings or who need specialise individual attention
• To create a space to allow recovery therapies after operations
• To Expand our weekly lunch club and offer a Community Meals service
• Provide a free Public Cooking Workshop and Event for unemployed, low-income individuals, migrants, or refugees
• Deliver a programme to teach effective budgeting for cost-effective meals
• Enabled elderly isolated individuals to ‘taste the world’ with food from different countries.

We could not do this without you - you have been incredibly supportive for many years and we are striving to do even more for our community.

Impact so far

We are trying to raise £50,000 from this crowdfund to help us build resilience and stability being able to renovate 4 rooms in our community shop will create training rooms/meeting spaces and a community kitchen to help support nutrition training. 

The funding is directed to increase our organisation’s enterprise capacity – we will be able to hire the space in e meeting rooms for training and it will build organisational stability and resilience through Cherishers 811 CIC enterprise growth, increasing our trading income so we in turn can give even more to our community. 

Below Image - big space before update!

Below Image - After crowdfund - large space after update

Having on site meeting and training rooms will be a new service we can offer that can increase trading income, having a commercial community kitchen will also increase the efficiency of our organisation to reduce costs and improve the quality of service – we can also attract new clients who wish to hire the kitchen and rooms for events such as parties and celebrations.

We have been using a domestic oven and a 4 ring hob and now cannot cope with the demand from our increased capacity warm room, we also lack food preparation space and equipment to develop our catering service to the community so we can deliver more meals and more food parcels as well as education on nutrition and financial value to reduce food poverty.

Below Images - rooms needing update.

We need help to deliver this new endeavour and to help it grow, develop and diversify - so that we can ultimately help more people and deliver greater impact across Cannock Chase and surrounding Staffordshire areas. 

The money we raise will go towards renovation of the 4 rooms including electrics, plastering, decorating and flooring. It will also support new equipment, such as digital technologies, wifi and presentation equipment in the training rooms. For the Community kitchen refurbishment we need to refurbish and install food preparation equipment, food store cupboard essentials and then promotional of these facilities

Our previous campaigns

In June 2023, Sport England - Places and Spaces provided £10,000 of funding which was focused on Community sport and physical activity groups looking to create, enhance or redevelop sports facilities for the benefit of their community as part of Birmingham 2022.

Our community space before the crowdfund could only host 10 people -and we had a wait list of additional 30 people who were interested in attending our sports therapy. With your support we beat our target and raised £22,815 which we used to extend our room so it can now host up to 60 people for sports art and green therapies as well as our lunch clubs. 

We successfully expanded our space into the property next door  - a 6x capacity increase for our sports therapy classes.

Our adaptive sport activities are proving to be a great way to overcome social isolation and something that people of all ages can get involved with.  We now host events of much greater scale that are not dependent on the weather and our outside courtyard space.

What we have also delivered:

We are thrilled to have delivered befriending, sports therapy, art therapy, a Platinum Jubilee Street Party and Art Mural, A community Coronation Celebration, Food parcels, Community Food table, Caring, a community garden, Clothes donations, Warm Room, Financial advisor benefit signposting, Digital enablement for Facetime and banking - NONE OF THIS WOULD BE POSSIBLE WITHOUT YOUR SUPPORT.

We are also supported by Chester the Therapy Cat!

THANK YOU FROM THE HEART FOR ALL THE SUPPORT YOU GIVE CHERISHERS.