Our shop was born out of years of meeting needs in our local community in an ad hoc way. The area the church serves is recognised as being among the most needy in Warwickshire in terms of multiple depravation; we were therefore seeing the need to regularly supply food and clothes to families. We also supplied Christmas hampers, which included toys, to families recommended by Social services.
This developed into us renting our first shop and then in 2004 we bought our current premises which was an old drinking club. This has since added the Oasis coffee shop.
Profits from the shop and Oasis are given to local charities and individuals with needs, as well as to some overseas charities. We have helped send children to the USA for specialist medical treatment, we support Zoe’s Hospice, Warwickshire Air Ambulance, Magon David Adom an ambulance service in Israel that works with Israeli’s and Arabs, we have helped fix a garden for a local boy with learning difficulties, and paid for physiotherapy for a boy with spina bifida etc. The needs are many.
We have a full-time manager, one part-time worker, and 13 volunteers.