Lidl Barry

We are all aged 55 plus, all with abilities and different needs. Our oldest resident is 97. We live at Western Court - a Wales & West Housing independent living scheme in Cardiff which is a bus trip or taxi journey to the nearest supermarket. Also many of us are on pension income and only one resident is in paid employment so being able to access the surplus Lidl food at our scheme will make a huge difference to us. We can use any funds we raise to help put on our social activities, which get us out of our homes and stop us feeling lonely and isolated. To help combat loneliness and isolation we get together to cook and eat meals together. so the food from Lidl will be used in this way. We arrange social activities to get us together at our scheme, most of which include food. We hold a coffee morning twice a week on Tuesdays and Fridays to get us together in our communal lounge. We also have other seasonal and personal celebrations too such as cream teas and fish and chips. and garden parties. Welcome people from our wider community and have lots of friends, neighbours and support organisations / agencies visiting our scheme and joining our activities. Our gardening club members have transformed our gardens from a plain lawns into a lovely productive and beautiful gardens. We work with Love Where You live on our gardens. We run our garden on contributions from residents but it is hard to manage on these contributions alone. If you or your staff would like to do any volunteer days at our community garden we would be very glad of your help, especially in the spring. Our main gardeners are all disabled so they would be very glad of help with some of the heavier gardening tasks. How you can help us: Our activities run on a shoestring so as well as the surplus food donations, we would be very grateful for any of the following broken bags for our community garden: • compost • stone chippings • wood chippings • barbeque coals Also we would love to receive any surplus: • cut flowers, including the flower buckets – these are great for growing tomatoes and cucumbers in! • plants / multipacks of plants that are worse for wear • out of date seeds and bulbs • plant pots • any other gardening materials or equipment We could collect these items as often as is needed – see below for our contact details. We have been told that these items are normally put in the bin so to prevent these items going into the landfill would be good for everyone. We try and raise some funds by holding occasional raffles and knitting for charities/ Samaritans Purse for children abroad for Christmas so we would also be very glad of: • anything that we could raffle • any knitting equipment or materials * any soaps / toothpaste / toothbrushes /flannels/ toiletries/ childrens' toys

Our group was set up in 2010 by a group of mums who wanted to do more for our kids on our estate. We do a range of events throughout the year and trips. We try to raise funds through our events but as most of us are on low incomes this isn't easy. We have lots of families on our estate being affected by the switch over to Universal Credit so they will be very glad of help with donated food. We can also use the donated food to promote health eating to families and teach people how to cook. One of our volunteers dawn trained as a cook so she is happy to lead on this, We work closely with Wales & West Housing, ACE (Action for Caerau & Ely) and the Hub.

Our charity manages castleland community centre near barry's main town. we provide a number of in-house run activities/services as well as manage the rooms for hire. every wednesday and friday we give access to free food provided by our partners as part of our Fareshare and Neighbourly initiative. we also run a friday night youth club for children and maintain a community park for public use.