Who Are We?
We are the Ukrainian Family Hub Warrington and The Daten Community, Events and Sports team also known as Culcheth Sports Club; essentially a partnership of 2 non for profit community groups joining together to create a community kitchen café, outside play/sports area and warm safe community space that focuses on building connections, promoting health and wellbeing, sport, diversity, combating loneliness and developing more community connections. We want to roll out the concept of the Ukrainian family hub to all in need.
Community Impact
Since launching the Ukrainian Hub in 2022 we have supported over 280 Ukrainian refugees; we provide a wide variety of support including, family hub activities, English lessons to support independence, housing advice, toy library, clothing, advice sessions, warmth and food.
We have fundraised to renovate our hub space at The Daten which will include a kitchen which we haven't had before and now we need to raise funds to provide community sessions for all of the community that are free of charge and promote our focus on building connections and providing a safe warm space in the heart of our community. We would like to run at least 2 free sessions a week where we provide a warm, safe space and provide food and drink. One for anyone and one as a homework club somewhere to go for our young people. We will provide games, bingo, craft and films afternoons and we have a number of partnerships with local groups that will support mental health drop ins and other developmental support opportunities. We also want to provide a place for mums to talk whilst their children can play and run mental health sessions which as a menopause cafe and its good to talk sessions.
We would also like to develop the community hub to provide more opportunities for everyone to access sport, we run outdoor education sessions fire pit time for the Ukrainian hub and also informal football sessions and other sports such as table tennis for the children and we would like to fund to extend this provision to the whole community as well. Focusing on mental and physical wellbeing.
We will also want to offer warm practical support by providing warm socks, hot water bottles, gloves, hats, coats and all other essentials that people may need.
Should our funding be successful we want to provide a monthly disability disco which will allow parents to relax in the hub whilst their children enjoy a safe place to dance and express themselves as well as many other community sessions such as a dementia cafe, IT and biscuits where the younger generation come to support the older generation with IT.
We have an outside space that currently isn't fit for purpose or safe and lacks any facilities we want a place to play safely and together ensuring connection is maintained with other children and they have a place that they feel happy and safe. The area we have is unloved and desperately needs fencing and we would love to create an outside play area which encourages physical activity with the children but also offers a free outdoor gym area for all ages. We would like this area to also have a seating area so the community can enjoy the cafe outside in the warmer months, creating a multi-purpose space. Ideally if we could create an undercover area making the play and sporting area accessible throughout the year this would be amazing. The land is currently waste land, grassed but runs straight on to a car park so it needs fencing and safe. It is big enough to section it off for all sorts of sport and play for the community and would be a real asset to the community. This area would not incur a membership fee so encourage sporting activities for everyone in the local community and integrating the Ukrainian community and others through sport. There are many groups that would be able to use the space if it was renovated with fencing, all weather surface including outdoor boot camps, football, dance, outdoor gym facilities as well as children's play area that focuses on sport and physical wellbeing and getting active.
All of this support will be free of charge.
Why we are Crowdfunding
We are crowdfunding to help us get our project off the ground after spending other raised funds on the renovation of the space to make it safe, warm and develop a kitchen. We need catering equipment, money for ongoing food funds, staffing, activities and energy bills. We would also like to renovate our outside space and make it a safe space for children and those coming to attend the hub to meet, do sport, play and improve their access to the outdoors.
We already support 280 Ukrainian refugees 3 times a week and we want to ensure that we are able to extend this offering to the whole community throughout the week and we need additional funding to achieve this. We offer den building and fire pit activities on the waste grass area at the moment and have some football nets up for the children but this area could be so much more useful, safe and supporting physical well being. The green space is directly outside the new community cafe and it could be a community outdoor sports and play area accessible for all. The area needs new fencing to make it safe due to its close proximity to the car park and investment in equipment and hard surface areas for all weather use.
Our Jigsaw Club has now started
Above is an image of some of the outside space that we want to develop.
Children playing on the outside area we would like to develop to be a Kids and Outside Fitness Zone
This is the children enjoying a fire pit session - as you can see the potential for the area of grass is huge, we could provide so much safe community space for the children to enjoy sport, play and the community to come together.