Like everyone else across the world, Charlies Angel Centre Foundation has been hit hard by Covid 19.
We moved into our first Bereavement Centre in July 2019 and have been able to develop and improve the services we provide to families following the loss of a baby or child. We were having up to 30 people in a week for face-to-face counselling as well as support groups and Drop Ins. We were able to organise and hold fundraising events at the centre and also had people take part in fundraising events for us.
Then March 2020 saw this all change. Lockdown began and the shutters at the Centre went down. We were all so worried about how the charity could survive this. We do not get any government funding and the money needed to maintain the Centre is from fundraising events us and our supporters host.
The day to day costs were still there, rent, gas & electric still needed paying. In total we think that 2020 will see us lose up to £25,000 in money that should have been raised for us. We all tried to come up with some ideas to raise money whilst having to stay at home or maintaining social distancing at the Centre. The most popular and easiest suggestion was to start an online store.
We already had lots of items that had been generously donated to us before Coronavirus took over our lives. We put out posts on our social media asking for donations and we have been blown away by the generosity of people. We soon realised that the amount of items we had was way too big for just online. Over the next few days we worked out how we could have the store in the Centre whilst maintaining safety for everyone.
Anyone that knows us knows that we never give up and if there is a hurdle in the way we will find a way to get over it.
We now have a fantastic Charity Store that is being ran from the larger room at the Centre. The room has been cleaned and any items received have all been steamed or thoroughly cleaned.
Currently we open the store on Saturday’s & Sunday’s between 12-2pm but we are also happy to open up if someone contacts us wanting to come along on another day and time. We would love to see lots more people coming down for a look around. The store has everything from toys & games, clothing (babies up to adult), shoes, pushchairs, electrical goods, furniture and lots more.
Why not pop down and see what bargain you can buy.
We are hoping that by opening the Store we will be able to raise some of the money needed to keep the charity afloat.
Charlies Community Store is located at 6B Ashbrooke Park, Parkside Lane, LS11 5SF
This post was written by Ruth Curtis
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