Our Story So Far…
Year 1
We opened our doors in January 2019 with the idea of welcoming the community of Whitefield into a place of safety and refuge. We were so excited to meet new friends and discover some of the challenges that the community faced. From starting the year with our community café and a couple of visitors, we grew organically and through word of mouth. By the summer months we were able to start an education programme as well as welcoming a number of community volunteers to the team. We teamed up with the council to run activities for local families as well as hosting our epic Christmas lunch to bring 2019 to a close. By the end of the year we were welcoming around 50 regular visitors.
In our first 12 months we welcomed 236 individuals to Trust House, with a total of 1853 visits in this period.
Year 2
2020 was certainly a challenging year for so many of us. After 3 short months, like the rest of the world, Covid forced us to close our doors. However, Trust House was far from being closed. We took our services out on the road, with regular food and door step deliveries as well as advice and guidance and signposting taking place over the phone. Our team may have been reduced by restrictions but our heart for the community was still strong.
By July, we had more than doubled the number of households that we were supporting and so looked to a more sustainable way of providing food for our visitors. The food pantry model was one which we had been keen to adopt for a while and in September 2021, we were able to launch with 40 households signing up in our first month.
We couldn’t let Christmas go by without spoiling our visitors and in December, with the help of lots of partners and friends, we were providing Christmas dinner packs, gifts, toys and treats in and around Whitefield.
Year 3
Despite many challenges from Covid with lockdowns, team absences and community infection rates soaring, we managed to keep Trust House open and operational during the last 6 months of 2021. We were also able to run a full programme of sessions and services including food pantry twice a week, digital inclusion sessions, tackling loneliness and isolation sessions and wellbeing groups. Community café also continued during this period, running four days a week serving breakfast and a hot, healthy meal.
Our community café has served 2826 hot, healthy meals as well as countless slices of toast, cups of tea and coffee.
Food pantry has provided a total of 2776 food parcels this year, averaging 240 a month.
43 individuals have completed our Helping Yourself to Wellbeing course since March 2021 and we have provided Advice and Guidance on over 250 occasions throughout the year.
Year 4
The beginning of 2022 saw us relocate to Bury, joining our wonderful friends at Metro Christian Centre. Our visitors, as usual, were amazing and embraced the change wholeheartedly. It was really important to us that we were still able to take care of our visitors and friends in Whitefield and so we were able to use the MCC minibus to ferry our visitors over to Bury.
The rest of the year has flown by, with lots of focus on mental health wellbeing as well as the establishment of our new pantry location, expansion of items available and a new pricing system. This year also saw us become a registered charity and hold two big fundraising events as well as a wonderful Jubilee event.
With the rising cost of loving being at the forefront of everyone’s mid, we have also been working with our visitors to develop money and energy saving tips. As always, Christmas saw us treating our visitors to a fabulous Christmas party as well as offering extra large free pantries and vouchers allowing households to purchase their Christmas food.