Salford-based homeless organisation Coffee4Craig is appealing to SalfordOnline.com readers and local businesses for help finding a new base.
The group have been operating from Lancaster House on Lancaster Road in Salford, but expansion plans at the hostel mean Coffee4Craig has agreed to move on and find a new home.
They only have until Christmas Eve, just 72 hours, until they have to pack up and move on.
Coffee4Craig was set up by Fie and Risha Lancaster in memory of Risha’s brother Craig White, who was found dead after sleeping rough in Cardiff.
Over the past three years they’ve passed out tonnes of donations to homeless people in Salford and Manchester, and run a popular street kitchen three times a week in the city centre.
These hot food support services run to around 200 people a week on Sundays from 3.30pm to 6pm and Monday and Tuesday evenings from 7pm to 9pm.
They also organised the country’s first ever Street Store pop up shop in the Northern Quarter, which gave away donated clothing to homeless people.
Fie and Risha confirmed that the street kitchens will continue to run from Sunday 27 December from a new location near Manchester Cathedral.
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The organisation also opened their own community foodbank in Salford dealing specifically with food donations to those without a permanent home.
But now they have just days before they have to move on, and need local business and volunteers to come forward so they can continue this good work.
They need:
- Storage for a food bank with 24/7 access (although access is mainly required before 10pm). This includes two fridge freezers and a chest freezer for fresh food used in food parcels.
- Accessible storage for clothing and donations of essentials such as sleeping bags, gloves, hats, wash kits which are taken to the street kitchen each week
- Accessible central Salford/Manchester location to store for street kitchen equipment, which includes tables, flasks, crockery and cutlery, coffee, tea and sugar
- Storage for office equipment or ideally an office space for two desks with internet access and filing cabinets.
Anyone who can help is asked to email office@coffee4craig.co.uk.
Risha told SalfordOnline.com: “We’re immensely grateful to all the staff, volunteers and residents at Lancaster House, especially Director Emma Hampson at Positive Lifestyles, the landlord Abbotsound Ltd and especially Mark Hampson for all their help and support over the last year.
“They have been fantastic and enabled us to help hundreds of people by creating our own community food bank and a place to store both food for our street kitchen and clothing donations.”
“Now they want to branch out and create their own ‘Friends of Lancaster House’ group and need the space we have been occupying to store donations.
“We have agreed to move out by Christmas Eve, ready for both of us to have a new start in the new year.
“We are donating some of our items to other groups, such as the Pankhurst Centre and Lifeshare, although we want to continue running Coffe4Craig and hope to minimise the impact of this change on people who use our service as much as we can.
“Our long term aim is to operate from a building where we are able to offer emergency accommodation to rough sleepers and provide evening food and a food bank for families and those in need.
“We would also love our own office space so we can have our home as a work-free zone.
“In the mean-time we have a wish list and are hoping the public or local businesses can help us so we can continue to help people in desperate need.”
