Community Enterprises PL12 Save Our Services

Community Enterprises PL12, like many households and other businesses and groups, has been significantly impacted by rising costs and at the same time, we’ve seen a drop in donations as people face their own financial pressures. This combination has made it increasingly difficult to cover the costs of running our essential services or extend our services more widely.  

Therefore, we are launching the SOS campaign—Save Our Services. This campaign is our urgent call to the community to help us keep our doors open and improving.

The SOS campaign is about raising awareness of the vital role we play in Saltash, Cornwall and encouraging people to donate, whether it’s through a small contribution for song sheets at our Memory Box Choir, food at the Fridge & Larder, a donation over tea and cake in the Kitchen, or a direct gift to support our wider work.  

What we already do... 

• Our Fridge & Larder runs at least three times a week, serving hundreds of people every month and saving around 10 tonnes of food going to landfill each year. It has proven to be a lifeline for many in our area, providing much-needed food while reducing waste.  
• Our Community Kitchen is a safe space for many local support groups and individuals, from cancer support and mental health talking groups to dementia groups, and everything in between. The team here serves over 500 people every month, offering nourishment alongside a safe, welcoming, inclusive environment that helps so many in our community to gain a sense of belonging. 
• Our Memory Box sessions offer crucial support to members of our local community who might otherwise have nowhere else to turn. The café, choir and veterans’ groups see nearly 100 people each week between them, working for those with a cognitive impairment, (especially dementia) and welcoming their carers, with a support group or them too. 
• Our Community Shop, has been a valuable hub for information and support for over 13 years, providing small local artisans and producers with a vital platform to sell their goods, positively impacting their businesses and our local economy, with new stock regularly and endless ideas and creativity.
• Our Properties Enterprise is also a vital aspect of our work. We have taken up cost-effective leases on unused buildings and improved them both at the Community Kitchen and at the Shop. We also manage a small building with offices ensuring we provide local tenants at affordable rents. This enables us to house the Saltash Citizens Advice Cornwall (free of charge) plus the local food bank and provides crucial income that helps towards funding all our other services and enterprises. 

What we want to do...

When we trialled our Cookery classes and Demonstrations in our Community Kitchen, they were really well received and we now have waiting lists for both when we are able to do more. 

This is a natural progression of our food recycling projects alongside helping the community. We want to share recipes and knowledge about freezing safely when there is a glut of food (as happens sometimes for example from Cornwall Gleaning or when our locals contribute all those extra courgettes or runner beans that just keep growing). 

Alongside this, our food larder is held 3 times weekly and we have also successfully trialled extending the larder as a mobile larder to reach more of our community. To do this effectively, we will need a van, preferably electric to be environmentally friendly and fuel-efficient.  So any additional funding we might make would be used towards providing this service to the more rural areas with a new vehicle. 

We have the food and volunteers, vision and energy, to make these things happen.

Who we are...

We are an army averaging 130 brilliant volunteers, 9 of whom form the Board of Directors, with 1.2 paid staff ; everyone bringing our skills and experience from all walks of life; we are a very inclusive organisation.  We are a DWP designated Disability Confident Employer and provide Duke of Edinburgh placements for volunteers; with cost-effective training supporting this, we positively welcome all kinds of people, some of whom just need an extra hand to achieve their potential either helping the community with us or moving into paid employment.  

Why is Community Enterprises PL12 important?  

Recognised locally as a capable and proactive positive force, Community Enterprises, puts back everything we raise into use for our everyone in our community, and we have the spaces, volunteers and initiatives to do even more with plans to extend our food recycling food initiatives, through cookery classes and demonstrations.  

The services we provide are unique and vital, both to Saltash and to our part of Cornwall. Each of our enterprises plays a crucial role in supporting families and individuals  and it’s important to ensure that we sustain what we are doing and enable us to respond to community need with new projects to help even more in the future.  

Our surplus food initiatives have prevented tonnes of un-sellable food going to landfill, and our discreet approach helps vulnerable families and individuals to cope when they fall between the gaps in the stringent criteria surrounding our local Social Prescribers and the Trussell Trust run food bank. 

But it currently costs around £1,300 per week to keep open our brilliant social hub, the Community Kitchen where everyone receives a warm welcome, a hot drink or food and where we provide spaces at reasonable cost or no charge for local groups, including a men's mental health talking group and one for women, the local social prescriber, therapy dogs, a stroke group, a dementia café to name just a few.

Our Vital Services support 17,000 people each year; our volunteers provide:

• Community Kitchen: Serving 300+ meals/month.
• Fridge & Larder: Saving 10+ tonnes of food/year.
• Memory Box: Supporting 100+ people/week.
• Community Shop: Helping 40+ local artisans and producers.
• Premises: Providing free office space to Citizen's Advice Cornwall.
• Community Hub: With many local facilities closing, CEPL12 is the heart of Saltash, providing essential support and connection.

The actions we are taking so far:  

• Reaching out to new investors and supporters from our community. Our Save our Services campaign is specifically designed to help our community better understand what we do and how to help us to do even more. 
• Revamping our organisation / structure. We are restructuring the Community Kitchen to maximise outputs and achieve overhead savings, including running volunteer led cookery classes and demonstrations.
• Actively considering and following up suggestions and feedback received as part of the SOS campaign.
• Setting up a membership scheme to benefit local businesses alongside raising funds for our Enterprises – every penny we make goes back into helping our community. 
• Accessing financial support available to us, including National Lottery and local community funders and longer-term support from things like Easyfunding.  

How your donation will help   

Please consider donating today. 

£15.00 would enable us to  pay the petrol costs to collect surplus food from local supermarkets for the Fridge & Larder for the week which serves 70+ people 3 times a week.

£30.00 would enable us to support 6 people at our Memory Box singing group for those affected by a mild to moderate cognitive impairment, especially dementia.

Your generosity will help keep our essential services running and help us develop more projects, ensuring that Saltash remains a place where everyone has somewhere to turn. Together, we can save our services and change lives.

When it is up and running, we welcome you to support us by joining our membership scheme where you will contribute to the longevity of this essential second home in our community, alongside gaining exclusive access to several benefits and the joy of being part of our community that champions the voices and stories that make us who we are.   

Community Enterprises PL12 needs your support to continue to provide a welcoming hub and extend more of these amazing services to our community.

Please donate what you can and share our Crowdfunder campaign so that we can continue to provide a warm space and welcome in all our community spaces, for groups and events, and help even more people in PL12.

                          Thank you from the bottom of our hearts