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Crawley Open House

Social Inclusion

We want to set up a workshop to give skills in bike maintenance and furniture restoration to clients who are trying to find employment.

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About this cause

We run a 24 bed homeless shelter, busy day centre, 3 move-on houses and community outreach teams in Crawley, West Sussex. We have been serving the homeless and vulnerable of the area since 1994. In the hostel guests can stay 28 days and we work with them to deal with the issues that conspired to leave them homeless, and to try and resettle them somewhere more permanent. We resettle two thirds of our residents successfully. Last year there were 17,000 visits to our day centre where we offer showers, a GP surgery, food & drink, company, haircuts, food parcels, health & financial advice, counselling, life skills classes, a clothing store and the services of a chiropodist. We are a charity and our local government funding is under pressure. I am the fundraising & relationships manager.

How this cause brings people in the community together

Many of the homeless and nearly-homeless people we work with are wanting to get work, but they often lack the skills, experience and confidence to do it. We hope that our employability project will get them used to working, teach them some new skills, instil some confidence and offer them an accreditation for their CVs. We expect it will reduce anti social behaviour in the area.