THE ONE CAMPAIGN

Aim

Establish a sustainable social business model for disabled people with learning disability,neurodivergent and various other additional needs

Dear community members, 

As a couple, we have been running a kiosk in Gants Hill Underground Station for past 8 years, since 2017.  What aimed to be a full fledged commercial business, our personal ambitions soon turned into a social mission. It all kickstarted the day we met our first ever SEND employee Gabrielle back in 2018 and without knowing she had a learning disability, we offered her a volunteer position to help her gain valuable work experience as she never worked anywhere before and also with a hope that we can help build her confidence as she stammered heavily while asking if we were still recruiting on the day we first met her, which coincidentally David also partially suffers from. Since then, our lives have completely changed and took a different turn.  

Before we opened, we had little or no knowledge what the neurodivergent spectrum was or the magnitude of the challenge we were about to embark on. So for the past 8 years, we have dedicated our time and effort into learning and dipping into their world to understand them better on and off work so that we could support them better. With little knowledge, we couldn't take a big group or act as if we knew the answers to the real problems and being a private limited company, very much limited our chances to apply for grants. But something within us told us we had to keep going which led us to continue taking on volunteers after volunteers on a case by case basis over the years. So far, we have supported and self funded 15 incredible volunteers, aged 56 to as young as 17 with various mental and physical health conditions i.e learning disability/ High Functioning Autism/ Down syndrome/ ADHD/ Schrezophenia/Speech Impediment / Roussy Levy Syndrome and other medical conditions. Some of them came for a short 3 month period but most stayed on for a year or over. So, inspired by multiple events that has occurred over the years, meeting wonderful  SEND volunteers, homeless people living in Gants Hill Station, wonderful customers and stakeholders, we finally feel ready and comfortable to share our story and try to complete the missing puzzle by connecting directly with our community members through "The One Campaign"

WHAR ARE OUR CHALLENGES?

When our SEND Volunteers finishes their training with us, they still struggle to find job elsewhere. They struggle to compete against others who don't have any or much barrier like themselves. Out of 15, at least 10 of them are still looking for a job. We can just stick with one small store, keep training them and keep applying for grants to cover our own salary but we feel that doesn't tackle or get closer to resolve the issue as all our effort will go in vain if they are still struggling to find job elsewhere or we are still struggling to offer them an employment after months of training with us. So, we feel we need to do something about it. To do this, we believe we need to make our social business model more stronger so that we can dream of replicating this model to create more jobs for disabled people who has various mental health and physical challenges.  

WHAT ARE THR PROBLEMS? 

In London Borough of Redbridge itself where we are only 2.03% of residents who are supported through Adult Social Care aged 18-64 are in work. (ASCOF data) 

The local charity Uniting Friends, who supports people with various mental and physical disability we work with says:

"Out of 169 service users only 10% are in paid employment.  The majority of those employed are employed via some kind of employment scheme or organisation supporting them. Only 1% found jobs via job centre or external opportunity"

We want to play our part to tackle this growing unprecedented social issue. We believe "The ONE Campaign" can be the one to tackle this issue. 

There is also a massive gap between the private and the Non for Profit sector. We feel a self sustainable business model for CIC's has not been properly tested yet. Hence when the funding stops the services stops. We would like to change that. We feel even if the funding stops, we should be in a position to keep continuing our services to our wonderful SEND Volunteers and still be able to make some profit on top of it.  

HOW ARE WE AIMING TO TACKLE THE GROWING ISSUE AND CHALLENGES?

Over the years we have seen many social enterprise organisations & charities closed down when the funding stops. We have struggled ourselves as sales has dipped 30% after the pandemic.

Hence, we are aiming to become a self sustainable social business model by trying a very simple formula 1-1-1. The, three magical number discovered by our friend and former volunteer/staff member, Glen Wemborne, who sadly passed away in 2021. Glen a massive England & Chelsea fan, suffered from Schizophrenia, ADHD and Autism. He was introduced to us by a wonderful charity Groundwork back in 2019 and was with us over a year specially the precious one to one time we spent during Covid 19 period. We miss him dearly and want to pay a special tribute by dedicating this campaign to him. 

More detail about how we met Gabrielle, Glen and what inspired this wonderful journey, you can watch our video narrated by former Strictly Come Dancing star and British Actress Chizzy: 

Video Link: https://youtu.be/2kZJqJpUlzY

Hence, we have come up with a humble campaign to tackle this issues "The ONE Campaign" requesting our local and wider community members to donate a £1, Tag 1 Family or Friend and Buy 1 Drink (at least once a year if you can). This campaign also tries to reflect how wonderful our volunteers are: Humble, Honest and Simple. Just a beautiful souls !!

How will your contributions help?

 * £1 will Help us raise amount to support the cost of training minimum of 3-5 Volunteers a year at least. More we can train the merrier !!

 * 1 Tag to your Family or Friends - will help us spread the awareness about the hidden disability and get the conversation going even further to create even more awareness that is desperately needed

 * 1 Drink a year -  Sales from each drink, will help us become self sustainable business and with enough sales will help create more jobs, hire more volunteers and staffs for training and any profit we make, we plan to use that as a deposit to fund our 2nd store which we are actively looking at for past 3 years since the pandemic. 

Conclusion: 

After years of waiting, we aim to tackle this unprecedented social issue with a simple formula "ONE" inspired by multiple events over the past 8 years. If this works, we can grow this social enterprise business further and set up multiple outlets to create more jobs for people with various disabilities. But without your support this will not be possible. After waiting for so many years, we feel like, we have to do this campaign now or it may never happen. As this is our very first campaign we hope you can join us and be part of our special journey. Please join and support our "THE ONE CAMPAIGN"

If for any reason, you cannot support us, you can always support your local charity of your choice. Or if you cannot make it to Gants Hill Station, we have recently opened our online store with Just Eat and Deliveroo apps too. 

It feels even more special as we launch this campaign on the day our daughter Dahlia turns ONE.

We would like to thank you for your time in reading our fundraising page. 

Much Love & respect, 

David & Anita

Funding method

Keep what you raise – this project will receive all pledges made by 26th June 2026 at 1:00pm