Rising Together - Cost Of Living Crisis Newcastle

Aim

To raise money to fund courses that empower unemployed people, providing both life and employment skills that support financial stability.

We are Big River Bakery - a community bakery - trying to make a difference in our local community 'One Loaf at a Time'.

We employ 16 people - including people with learning difficulties.

We are a commercial bakery, shop and cafe - and we endeavour to be at the heart of and serving the people in our local community. 

Our opportunities are open to everyone in the community - to reduce the stigma of perceived 'charity' to people who most need our support.

We deliver free baking sessions to people who are unemployed.*

 In 2022 we have worked with schools to provide school holiday activities and holiday club breakfasts - to ensure all children have access to fun activities. 

We provide weekley 'free' lunch days throughout the year - again open to all of our customers.

We have recently started to provide breakfast bags to a local school to ensure kids who cannot access breakfast clubs - don't start their day hungry. It's a small number of children - but important to ensure all children start the day on an equal footing. 

All this work is delivered via our trading income and the generous donations of customers.

We have created Scotty the Stottie (cake) soft toy and book to help fund our children's activities.

With your help we want to extend the work we do in our community. From 2023 we want to restart our free courses for people who are unemployed - providing life skills as well as portable skills to increase the chances of employment-  delivering basic baking -food management - food hygiene - confidence- social skills -experience of foh / shop/cafe work.

£50,000 will ensure we can run these courses throughout the year- inclusive for everyone in our community who can benefit from them.

Any excess monies will help support and extend our breakfast to schools offer and school holiday projects - helping us to reach more children in need in our area.

Thank you - the Big River Team

*We did receive funding to support us delivering our sessions to unemployed people (ESIF) - but this ended in July 2022 although we are continuing to deliver to December 2022. This funding restricted our delivery to certain post codes and excluded asylum seekers. We want our offer to be available to all.

This project successfully funded on 23rd December 2022