Time to Donate!

Today we met with June, Julie and Ben at Inn Churches HQ in Bradford. For the first time we saw all the pieces together and I think we were all truly impressed by what we'd achieved! From the start of the project we had aimed to have enough objects to contribute to a substantial amount of Home Starter Packs (while bearing in mind the time scale we had) so when we totted up 13 cushions and 2 draft excluders I think we all felt we'd achieved this. This was definitely reinforced when June, Julie and Ben saw the volume of items we had created. They told us they were amazed by the amount we had achieved and how it was so much more than they had expected.

We hadn't actually seen Julie and Ben since our first meeting with them in February so we ran through what we had been aiming to do, how we came up with our concept (thanks again Ben!) and what we'd done to achieve it. They were really pleased with the amount of people who had engaged with the project and loved the envelopes we'd made to give to people (we took one along as a example). Julie even described them as 'pieces of art' which was a fantastic compliment after all our hard work! They fed back that they thought the gift tags were a brilliant idea and that being able to see who had contributed their time to the items would really impact on the people receiving the items. Our end goal all along had been to create items to be included within the Home Starter Packs, however Julie and Ben told us they didn't want the items to just be put in with the Packs. They want to be selective about who they give them to, so that they go to people who will really cherish and be impacted positively by the time, care and love embedded into each piece. They also told us they would give each piece to these individuals personally so they could explain the work we'd done and the meaning behind each piece. I think this is a much more successful outcome than any of us could have anticipated and it feels so rewarding to know they're going to provide reassurance and comfort to those in vulnerable situations. The images below show all the items together being donated at Inn Churches HQ.