Since Chris Matheson MP cut the ribbon and opened it’s doors on the 16th of January 2016, Chester’s #ShareShop set itself a difficult and ambitious mission to raise enough money to buy a house in the City of Chester to help people off the streets.
The new grass roots charity run by local people wanting to make a difference, began crowdfunding by selling bricks for just £1 each in a virtual house. Once enough money has been raised to buy the house, the charity will use this property to take people who are homeless, off the streets of Chester once and for all.
Once in the house these people will be helped to tackle any addictions they have, given food and clothing and helped by business mentors to gain work experience and evidence their training and achievements on a CV, then help them to find long term employment with local understanding businesses, helped off benefits and into private rented accommodation, allowing our volunteers to take more people off the streets into the house, and so on...
But we haven’t just been sat around waiting in the meantime... Eager to make a difference today, the charity shop has already helped people to get off the streets, off benefits and into employment and private rented accommodation even without the house to prove that the model really works!
We are now delighted to announce today that we have sold 60,000 bricks and we are well on our way to being able to buy the house sooner rather than later and change even more people’s lives who are currently sleeping rough on the streets of the City. We just need one final push!!
Co-Founder and Trustee of Share Adam Dandy said
“It was an ambitious campaign on day one, amongst everything else that we are doing at Share, to raise enough money to buy a house, something which takes most of us our entire working life to achieve, but I remember on the first Saturday after the shop had opened a young boy ran in, followed quickly by his mother, she explained that he had worked extra hard to earn as much pocket money as he could that week, and to the family’s surprise had said that he wanted to buy as many bricks in the house for the homeless that he had heard about in his school assembly earlier that week! I watched as he spilled all of his change out on to the shop counter and ran over to proudly sign his name onto our brick wallpaper, which will be used to decorate a room in the house. It was then that I knew we’d do this!"
We’re now almost there and with one final push we really can turn all those bricks into real life saving bricks and mortar!
If you can help by holding a non uniform day for £1 each at your school or workplace or a cake sale or sponsored run... we really would appreciate your help right now, to get across the line and be able to put our arm around someone and unlock the door to a new much brighter and safer future right here in our great City of Chester.”
To donate please click here