Warwick community centre gets helping hand

A generous donation has helped a community centre in Warwick continue its charity work and help it get back on its feet following a temporary closure due to the pandemic.

Severn Trent's Community Foundation has awarded The Gap, at Oakwood Grove, near Spinney Hill, £5,000 to help the charity continue to serve residents.

This is part of the utility company’s commitment to supporting its customers and the local community by giving charities a helping hand to get back to normal following the Covid-19 crisis.

The money will help the charity and community centre continue its work building stronger communities in Warwick North and West on the Percy and Packmores estates, helping children’s well-being and development by running youth clubs across four community centres at The Gap, Chase Meadows, Woodloes and Packmores, and helping isolated older adults find friendship and peer support by running social activities.

The funding will help to overcome income losses due to lack of room hire whilst the centre was closed.

During lockdown The Gap has been supporting the community by running a telephone and letter befriending service for 80 shielding adults, three times weekly youth club activities for seven to 16 year olds via its vetted Facebook group, and community outreach on the Packmores estate.

With local charity Make Lunch Warwick, the Packmores team has been working to ensure children do not miss out due to the uncertainty of Covid-19, by providing free fresh food supplies for free school meal families on the estate, if home budgets are being stretched too tightly over the extra-long school break.

The team has also partnered with Leamington Morrisons, to involve the community in giving something other than food, by inviting kind shoppers to donate children’s books.

The joint idea between Packmores Local Engagement Officer Debbie Behan and Morrisons’ Community Champion, Alex Pearson offers donated books to Packmores free school meal children to help keep them entertained at home and to provide literacy practise and distraction from the crisis.

The Gap hopes to restart its youth groups and reopen to community groups from mid-September.

In preparation, the community centre, a converted church hall, has been given a thorough deep clean and rigorous risk assessment to ensure it is ready to welcome back service users safely.

The Gap Director, Marcos Campos said: “We are extremely grateful to The Severn Trent Recovery Fund for its generous donation.

"With current financial uncertainty, the money will support us to reopen responsibly and gradually to ensure everything is in place to protect our beneficiaries as much as possible.

"We take people’s health and wellbeing very seriously.”

For more information go to: www.facebook.com/TheGapWarwick or call 01926 494200.