Review of 2023 - what we have achieved

Here we are at the turn of the year, a great time to look back over the last 12 months and celebrate all that we have achieved.

Our volunteers this year have made some amazing things happen. A huge thank you to all those who have contributed to the 603 volunteer hours; updating the community space, cleaning and tidying, serving customers, helping with fundraising and hosting our events and so much more. In addition, a big thank you to our dedicated teams who work in the gardening and finance groups and thanks to you we have earned extra income from our plant sales and got our accounts ready before Christmas, a first for the organisation.

We would like to say ‘you are amazing’ to all our customers who have donated items to the food bank over 2023. The total value of donations for the year was £887.28 with a total of 332 items donated. ‘You are wonderful’ badges too to all those who ‘paid it forward’ through the purchase of ‘The City of Stolen Magic’ for pupils at Mount Pleasant School.

There have been some fantastic events this year, many of them supported by Necessity, funders who have helped us to continue to deliver a programme of events in the community space. A huge thank you to them for their continued support. We’ve had conversations about travel without flying, new economies, our policing system, our local swift population, the strength of the Israel lobby, theology in these uncertain times, as well as a visit from Rafael Behr and many other local authors.

We’ve had two really engaging social events, when volunteers, hirers and members have all got together to share food and conversation. The curries have been really tasty and there have been some great new connections made.

We have also seen some huge changes in the shop team over the year, with Jamie, Jonny and Jess all leaving to go to other jobs or study and here at the end of the year we also say au revoir to Ellen and Liz (au revoir we hope as they are both keen to stay involved in some way). We have welcomed Liz, Alex, Beccy and Jacqueline to the team and will likely be seeing more changes in 2024.

So, that’s some of the highlights, as so much more has happened that we don’t have room for here. We are community inspired and community owned and want to be the inspiration for a more regenerative way of doing business in these challenging times, so do let us know if you would like to get involved.