As a shop we support five charities in various ways, the causes we have chosen to support are:
TASTE
Refugee Support Europe
ASSIST Sheffield
Weston Park Hospital Cancer Charity
Hope English School
Would you get up before dawn to collect muddy water from dew-pools that have formed overnight? Would you dig into the sandy river bank to get water for your children to drink? That’s how many of the communities that TASTE support get their drinking water.
For the ‘lucky’ ones, they simply have to trek 5km to the stream each time they want more water. It is estimated that during the dry season, women and children spend an average of five hours every day fetching water! For many children this means missing school – which doesn’t worry them too much but really hampers their education.
When they get to the stream, the water they collect will often be polluted and will need to be boiled or filtered before it can be drunk. Imagine the children playing … getting hot … and running to the stream to guzzle some water!
130,000 children under 5 die every year from diarrhoea in Nigeria. That is one little life every four minutes!! When TASTE provides clean drinking water via a borehole, the incidence of illness amongst the community – especially amongst the children – is reduced dramatically.
TASTE was set up as a result of first hand experience of one of the Trustees, Ben Udejiofo, who saw in his own village the desperate need for access to clean water. He registered TASTE as a charity in the U.K. on September 7 1999, to encourage the spread of appropriate and sustainable technology in Nigeria. Originally, the intention was to take the form of sending suitably qualified professionals to work alongside local professionals. However, this quickly moved to developing our own Nigerian drilling team who are responsible for the construction of community boreholes. More recently, we have seen volunteers from the UK travel to Nigeria to share their expertise, thus developing the skills and capacity of our own staff and the communities with which we work.
TASTE is our primary shop charity and we will continue to give our profits to them at the end of each financial year.
Being a refugee strips you of all dignity. Refugee Support Europe helps to restore it. They help refugees, and the communities that harbour them, with much needed material support.
But what makes them different is how they do what they do. Refugee Support Europe has pioneered an approach where everything they do is driven by respecting the dignity of the refugees they support. And every idea they have is measured by how it can in some way restore or enhance the dignity of the people they help. They call our approach Aid With Dignity.
In March 2022, a Refugee Support team went to Moldova to support the country and the many Ukrainians who had fled there. Within 12 days, they had identified an essential need they could fill, formed partnerships, found a location and started distributing aid with dignity.
From when they opened in mid-March to October 1st 2022 they:
- Have served over 27,000 people
- 37% of them have been children
- 79% of the adults have been women
- 13% of the adults have been 65+ years old
They have distributed over 120,000 of food and hygiene items in the first 4 months of operation. Everything has been sourced locally from Moldovan companies.
ASSIST Sheffield is a community led charity who support some of the most vulnerable people living in Sheffield – people who have been unsuccessful in their applications for asylum and as a result have been made destitute. Many of them have escaped the unimaginable horrors of war, violence and persecution, but simply telling the truth about the conditions they have fled sadly isn’t always enough.
Without refugee status asylum seekers are not allowed to work. Once their initial application for asylum has been turned down many are left with no right to housing, benefits or other vital support. They’re left homeless, destitute and vulnerable on the streets of our city.
ASSIST is an invaluable lifeline for refused asylum seekers in Sheffield, offering solidarity, support and hope in the form of accommodation, advice and access to essential services.
For one in two of us, cancer will change everything. When it does, Weston Park Cancer Charity is there to face cancer with each one of their patients. Their services, advice, therapies and support are for their patients and the people close to them, helping everyone to live with and beyond cancer. The funds they raise also support vital, pioneering research and clinical trials led by the exceptional medical experts at Weston Park Cancer Centre. It’s their job to care in every sense for our patients and their families. Their help is free, and they remain for their patients at every step of the journey.
Both directors Rob and Jenny Coleman worked at Weston Park Hospital for many years and have seen the real difference that the Cancer Charity makes to patients at the hospital.
Hope English School is a Sheffield based charity specialising in the provision of ESOL (English for speakers of other languages) classes to asylum seekers, refugees and vulnerable migrants. They work with a variety of organisations across South Yorkshire to provide community based classes to those most in need.
Hope English School exist to see asylum seekers and refugees set free from the isolation that comes from not being able to speak the language of the culture they are in. They believe that there is a future and a hope for their students and that language plays a key role in providing them with opportunities and helping them to integrate. Hope English School provide small class sizes, with qualified CELTA-trained teachers, provide childcare in the form of a safe secure creche and when needed, women-only classes. Through English classes learners will gain knowledge confidence and vital life skills. In time, learners will be able to progress to accredited classes; thereby gaining recognition for their work and evidence for future opportunities.