M&S Dorking

We are a thriving Community Centre in the heart of Dorking, with a warm welcome to all, irrespective of age, ethnicity or background. We offer refreshments and home cooked meals every weekday at very reasonable prices, activities such as chair exercise, dementia friendly singing, a social tea & dance group, beginners bridge, table tennis and many more to anyone who would like to join in. The Community Wardrobe is held every Friday, to save re-useable clothes and help those in need. The Community Fridge run sessions in the Foyer, providing surplus supermarket food, which would otherwise go to waste, free to those who cannot afford to pay. The Foodbank operates from the Centre every Tuesday afternoon. Every winter we provide a Warm Space with free breakfast to help those suffering in the cold. Our Christmas Day lunch is also very well attended every year by 40-50 people. Our Parish Nurse, Jo, is here twice a week to promote health and support everyone’s wellbeing. Our Deacon, Stephen, is also available to talk to those who need a listening ear. In addition, we have well used counselling rooms and other rooms to hire for various community groups such as Brownies and Rainbows, the RSPCA, children’s classes and other Church groups. Anyone coming into the Centre is welcome to use our services and join our social groups. Donations from Neighbourly partners are occasionally used to top up our affordable meals and to enhance the social events by enabling us to offer refreshments. As well as being a treat to the participants, it helps create a friendly, social aspect to bring together people who may otherwise be socially isolated. We do not directly charge for any donated food used in the Centre. There is small nominal charge for attending each social group, but no additional charge for refreshments. Our café meals are charged at a low rate to assist with the food, preparation & energy costs involved. We do not directly charge for any donated food used in the Centre. Any food not directly used by the Centre is then placed in our foyer for the local community to take as needed, to avoid any food waste.

The Meeting Place was founded in 2011 with the principle aim of reducing social isolation. A coffee shop was set up in January 2012 with soft play facilities to encourage young mums and child carers to come in and stay as long as they liked. The older generation also enjoyed coming into a place where there was no time pressure. Since that time we have started up a language hub to assist those whose English is a second language and may be struggling in confidence and finding friends. We have also arranged lip reading classes for those struggling with communicating as deafness begins to limit them. In 2019 The Meeting Place agreed with the idea of having a Community Fridge, principally to reduce food waste, to be available at the times the Coffee Shop was open, initially this started on a small scale in January 2020. When the Coronavirus situation changed peoples lives we felt that we wanted to support the people who had been using the Fridge by delivering a bag of food to their door. This has grown from supporting 20 Families in March to over 170 at the present time. Most of our growth has resulted from professional referrals due to financial hardship or shielding.

We have three hubs located in central Dorking, Goodwyns and Leatherhead. where we put good, surplus food which local people can take. Our mission is to reduce surplus food from being wasted and to make it available to our community. We collect daily from local supermarkets, and also collect food from FareShare, for which we pay a fee. Since 2017 we have saved 1,737 tonnes of food from being thrown away! COVID We changed our operation to food parcel delivery to people referred to us by statutory agencies and the community. We now have 3 static fridge sites: Dorking, Goodwyns and Leatherhead and we have a Mobile Fridge on the road serving rural Mole Valley. The point is to reduce food waste, and happily, we are also reaching those in our community who find themselves in food poverty.