Aviva Community Fund has provided £2,344 of match funding
Homeless not hopeless
Armley, England, United Kingdom
Aim
Helping the homeless, launching Leeds' first container home project, providing food parcels and welfare support to thousands of people
At Vulnerable Citizen Support, we offer instant, accessible help to anyone in need, without judgement, from food parcels to housing or rehabilitation advice, helping the homeless and our innovative container home project.
We run a drop-in welfare centre and food bank, deliver food parcels, run a homeless outreach service and we are also building Leeds' first container home project for the homeless.
We want to raise £15,000 to reach reach more people and make a bigger difference to the lives of those who need it. Our £15,000 target would allow us to pay the wages of a desperately needed support worker to help more homeless and vulnerable people on the streets and in our welfare centre - most of our amazing team are currently volunteers.. It would also secure the rent on the land for our container home community for six months - giving homeless people a second chance at a sustainable future and we could keep our food bank stocked for a few weeks.
Transforming lives - Josh and Louis
Our ethos is to transform lives, like Josh's in the video above, offering a sustainable second chance. At just 25, Josh had been sleeping rough for two years. The death of his father, and some mistakes that he had made, had led him into addiction to spice and crack cocaine. In December, we met Josh and through some generous donations we were able to place him in a B & B over Christmas to start rebuilding his life. Now, through hard work and determination, he has been clean for six weeks, has a job at a local landscaping firm and this week will move into his own property along with Louis another of our beneficiaries.
Josh when we first met him - and now just six weeks later:
Louis became homeless at just 19 - he has no addiction history or criminal record and was shy and nervous of being placed in a homeless hostel or shelter. Thanks to donations from people like you, Josh and Louis will be starting a new chapter in their lives in a safe, secure, supported home.
The container home project - a second shot at a stable life
Josh and Louis are just the tip of the iceberg though - we want to transform more lives like this - people who have taken one wrong turn or experienced misfortune and need some long-term support to get back on track.
Our idea is simple but similar concepts have proven to be hugely effective in other parts of the UK. We have started building a micro-home from a donated shipping container that will provide self-contained living space for one person for six months. That six months will be a lifeline, during which time our organisation will provide employability training, support looking for jobs, or referrals and liaison with other agencies that can help with a permanent housing solution. Our first home is almost complete and we have secured a piece of land to build more - we just need to raise the funds to kickstart the project, pay the rent on the land and build more homes so we can turn around more lives.
Helping struggling families
From our welfare centre, we provided more than 105,000 meals last year, helped more than 500 families with baby essential baby supplies and rehoused 15 homeless families. Our ethos is that we will help anyone who needs it with no judgement, no complicated referrals and no red tape. Since we set up a year ago, we have helped those fleeing domestic violence, found permanent and temporary beds for people sleeping on the streets, fought eviction and deportation cases and much more.
We know times are tough for everyone right now but for some the current situation is impossible without support from organisations like ours. Universal credit claims in Leeds have shot up by 99% since the pandemic started and it’s estimated that the number of children living in poverty has risen by 10% in the past four years in some parts of the city. Homelessness is also at an all-time high - almost 1000 people were forced to either beg or sleep rough in Leeds in 2019, and at least 19 rough sleepers have died in the city in the last three years.
Could you pledge to our project, helping us to help more people and making an amazing difference to other people's lives?
This project successfully funded on 23rd March 2021