Always on
This project successfully funded on 25th April 2024, you can still support them with a donation.
Hailsham Community Shed
Hailsham, East Sussex, United Kingdom
Aim: The project aims to offer people in the community a safe space to socialise and learn new skills/share their skills.
The project aims to offer people in the community a safe space to socialise and learn new skills/share their skills.
Furniture Now! will share part of the Hailsham shop to include a Community Shed within our walls. Community Now! will start the shed a few days per week, run by volunteers.
The Community shed will up-cycle our existing furniture (donated to the shop) and will be re-sold by the shop.
Why Community Shed?
The concept of Men in Sheds is quite popular throughout Sussex and the concept is to reach out to isolated men and offer them a safe space to socialise, volunteer, and gain new skills.
However, the concept of Men in Shed does not fit with the Now! Charity’s value of inclusivity and a community shed would imply that everyone is welcome, not excluding any gender.
Still in 2023, the concept of making furniture, DIY, even up-cycling is very gendered, and often thought about as “manly tasks”. Opening our community shed to everyone and helping women get more diverse skill sets is crucial.
What issues does the project tackle?
1.Improving mental health/ lives in the community:
- In 2022, 49.63% of adults (25.99 million people) in the UK reported feeling lonely occasionally, sometimes, often, or always.
- Approximately 7.1% of people in Great Britain (3.83 million) experience chronic loneliness, meaning they feel lonely often or always.
The Tackling Poverty Report, launched by Sussex Community Foundation in 2023, found that elderly people, people from ethnic minorities, LGBTQIA+ people, as well as people with disabilities were more likely to be socially isolated and live in poverty.
The same report found that Hailsham’s index of multiple deprivation stands on the 4th decile.
In their report, Campaign Towards Loneliness (charity) explains that:
“The close relationship between loneliness and health is well-documented. In 2023, people who said they had a physical and/or mental health diagnosis were over three times as likely to be chronically lonely than those who said they did not. “
Our Community Shed offers a safe space for people from all backgrounds to socialise and learn new skills, indirectly tackling both mental health and employability/ local poverty.
2.Environment:
Furniture Now! will provide the Community Shed Volunteers with second-hand furniture and all necessary equipment to upcycle them. The Community Shed feeds our “No-landfill policy”, helping us give a second life to pre-loved furniture.
The visibility of our Community Shed will also help Community Now! in our activism against single-use and promoting a re-use, re-fresh, re-cycle system.
However, a project of this size does have a cost and our small charity needs your help to try and tackle some of the costs. For this purpose, we want to be completely transparent with you so you can see where the money is going:
Budget 2024:
Rent: £1,000
Salaries: £20,000
Tools: £1,000
Tools maintenance £1,000
Volunteers’ expenses: £200
Marketing: £1000
Refreshments: £200
Total per annum/running costs: £24,200.
Works to the unit: £5,000
Tools: £1,000
Total setting-up costs: £ £6,000
Total amount to cover the project for 12 months: £30,200