Fitzherbert Winter 2023 Appeal

FITZHERBERT COMMUNITY HUB - The First Year

We've just celebrated the first year anniversary as the Fitzherbert Community Hub, and it has been a remarkable and exciting twelve months.

The Fitz, as it is affectionately known, is home to four community projects based in the heart of Brighton's Kemptown: Brighton Table Tennis Club, The Real Junk Food Project Brighton, Voices in Exile and the Catholic Parish of East Brighton.    Key to its success is the commitment and aspiration of all partners towards community integration and social value – all core to the individual philosophies of each partner, however differently demonstrated in their own membership and work.

Why are we raising funds?

We've been surprised and delighted by the way the community has embraced this amazing space.  This has led to a need for more furniture and equipment.  We just don't have enough of the lovely tables we commissioned from the charity Making It Out to seat everyone.  We've budgeted £2000 to obtain more tables.

We also need more table tennis kit for the many cafe visitors who have taken up the sport as a result of the free sessions that the club offers to hub visitors.  

However, the biggest strain on our resources is our commitment to provide meals and table tennis to those who can not afford to pay.   

The club usually charges £5 for a table tennis session.  The subsidy needed to give free sessions 4 days a week to 10 people over 40 weeks is £8000.  We currently have some funding for this but it will run out later in the year.

The Real Junk Food Project offers food on a pay-as-you-feel basis so that ability to pay is not a barrier to enjoying healthy and nutritious meals that are created by chefs using surplus food. By selecting a ‘pay forward’ reward in this campaign, you are buying a meal for someone who can not afford the ‘suggested’ price and helping us pay our bills.  

The suggested donation for a meal is £5 to cover food, utilities, rent and staff.  We're providing over 100 meals each day on five days a week. We calculate that over half of the meals are for people who can not afford to make a donation.

The story so far ...

To be able to achieve this in a beautifully elegant space, newly transformed, has been empowering for our combined community endeavours. The Fitz is already becoming known as being a new and inspirational model of community integration.     Already, good food, fitness and fellowship have been modelled successfully and this is increasingly appreciated by people of every age and background in our economically diverse area.

The magic is in its innovation and adventurousness to push forward its purpose. Creativity is at the heart of all the enterprise in The Fitz.

What We Do

Meals are served each day bringing delicious and nutritious food for cafe frequenters using a donation/pay as you can /pay forward model. Meals are cooked from scratch using food that has been prevented from going to waste by the Junk Food team who have rescued of 70 tonnes of food this year.  In the twelve months we have been open, we have provided 

• 100 meals per day on average
• served over a meal a minute for the first 45 minutes of service (usually 50 plus meals by 12.45pm)
• pre-lunch coffee (average 120 per session), tea and home-made cakes

We have a team of dedicated volunteers (10-12 per service) who clean (antibac) all the tables and sweep the cafe before 10am opening and have helped us achieve a 5 star hygiene rating from our local EH department.

Local young children are coached in both cookery and table tennis in BTTC@TheFitz after school clubs. The children rotate between playing table tennis and learning a new sport and cooking where they make food for themselves and their families who are invited to join the children to sit together and share food at the end of the session.

Kitchen training skills are offered freely and there is guidance for those wishing to learn more about how to make better use of the food they have at their disposal, creating opportunities for everyone to have access to healthy food and be part of an environmental movement.

The garden across the road has been transformed into a lovely green community space. It now boasts a plot producing food for the Fitz and local families. It also supports our desire to achieve environmental sustainability. This is being managed by a team of volunteers who are benefitting from being outside and more active. All the food waste from the cafe is composted and used to feed the garden.

Local groups from the community and the parish meet in the cafe to talk, plan and have workshops. Table tennis players and visitors lunch there everyday and the door is open (quite literally) for other cafe users to play table tennis at the club. BTTC invites and encourages anyone who eats at the cafe to come through the corridor and take part in a fun free lunchtime session twice a week. We believe we will rekindle the love of table tennis in some and introduce others to it for the first time. During the warmer months there is a table tennis table in the courtyard which is free for anyone to use and usually to table tennis players who will give anyone a game.

The courtyard and link corridor are designed to be a symbol of our partnership work where the open doors of the cafe, the church and the table tennis club invite and welcome all comers. We are now extending our hours and our activities in the Fitz, offering more to support local people and families to meet, feed, learn and have fun there. We are privileged to have many wonderful volunteers which help keep costs down, but the cost of living crisis is very challenging for us all. Despite this, we are increasingly committed to try to help people who find things like nourishment, activity, friendship and empowerment opportunities difficult to access for many different reasons.

Our aspiration to reduce food poverty and social isolation in our community by bringing people together to share food, friendship and to be healthier and more active is working and we aim to try to raise more resources to continue and sustain this pledge at the Fitzherbert Community Hub.

We are proud of what we have achieved so far as head into 2024 and look forward to even more support and activity which will enable us to move with our community into our second year full of promise and growth.

We have managed to put The Fitz on the map.  In our first year we hosted:

Little Amal is a larger-than-life puppet of a 10-year old Syrian refugee child. She has become a global symbol of human rights, especially those of refugees. We welcomed her to Fitzherbert earlier in the year. Jane Horrocks came to the Hub to talk about her life and to help raise funds for Brighton Table Tennis Club.

Rugby World Cup Final with Alastair Hignall

Local wine-merchant Henry Butler was centre-stage for a fundraiser in aid of Friends of Brighton & Hove Hospitals.

And many more including 

• Hove Rotary Soiree Dinner
• Visiting table tennis players from the Philippines
• World Refugee Day event
• Church-focused groups such as Christian Action Brighton, Interfaith Contact Group, and Modern Slavery and Human Trafficking Workshop

Your donation will make a difference

At this time of year especially, when people are thinking about how to express their goodwill more meaningfully, why not gift forward to the Fitz for others to benefit?

£50 enables us to feed 10 more people, £100 feeds 20 and so on.  See our rewards section.

And if you receive the Winter Fuel Allowance and feel able to share it, please donate some of it so others can enjoy the warm and welcoming space that is the hallmark of the Fitzherbert Hub.

Plus, we have rewards

This A2 Giclee unframed print by artist Lee Baker.  Plus some lovely items from Brighton Table Tennis Club 

Signed Artist Proof by David Shrigley;  Lunch at the Windmill; Beach Hut for a day

How you can play your part

There are four simple ways to help us reach our target, and make this project a reality. 

• Make a pledge. Don’t delay if you’re going to support us because momentum is key to our success!
• Spread the word. Share our project on your social media pages and tell the world to get behind us! The more people we reach, the more support we will get.
• Offer rewards. Get involved if you are a local business by donating things we can offer to our supporters. We will give you a shout out!
• Fundraise for us. If you want to run your own fundraiser – maybe a sponsored activity or similar – use the 'contact project' button at the top of our page to let us know. Setting up your own page only takes a few minutes and you won’t need any bank details. Just a fun idea!

And finally ...

Fitzherbert Community Hub is a collaboration between  Brighton Table Tennis Club, The Real Junk Food Project Brighton, Voices in Exile and the Catholic Parish of East Brighton. The fund and the hub premises are under the auspices of the Catholic Parish of East Brighton, part of the Diocese of Arundel & Brighton | Arundel & Brighton Diocesan Trust registered charity 252878

All proceeds from this crowdfunder will be used exclusively for the Fitzherbert Community Hub.