The Co-operative Food - Seasalter, Faversham Road

A community initiative to help provide a sensory respite garden space for those in the community needing time to recover from looking after others or individuals going through the effects of chemotherapy. A big part of this project is to look after mental health of individuals and at the same time creating pollinating plants to help care for environment. The start of the initiative will begin in council estates across Kent and a vision for it to be a national initiative. By supporting this initiative, it will mean that professional, family Carers and individuals struggling will have not only a space to go to but it also will bring community together and connect people again. Bigger organisations and charities are sometimes at a capacity and waiting lists for individuals are adding to the stresses... so why not let community be there and support one another, along with mental health first aiders, counsellors, ex carers creating CCS Garden spaces. It will turn into a temporary middle service whilst waiting for the bigger organisations for the help and support. Note: this project started in 2019 when I was a family carer and wanted a space to recover in between the intensity of caring for my Mum. I never got to have that. But due to the demands and needs. I had to pause the project until now. She passed peacefully March 2020. I promised her I’d bring care back to community and make this the best it can be. It’s an initiative for now and will be a charity as soon as it can prove to work for community. Looking for Carers, families that have gone through the experience and those going through or survived through cancer to get in touch.

The KM Charity Team is Kent’s leading independent charity giving children the knowledge and the motivation to be the best they can be. Our core programmes are our literacy and environmental initiatives and both are going to be more needed than ever before when children finally return to school. The ability to read is something the majority of us simply take for granted, most of us can’t even remember learning to read. But for many children, reading isn’t a given. Our literacy programmes don’t replace school based reading schemes, they support them. They encourage children to read ANYTHING from the back of a frozen pizza box to their favourite team’s football program (not every household has books at home but they all have something to read – and that’s what counts!). They are rewarded with class prizes, team rewards and school treats – developing a sense of achievement, belonging and most importantly being free to expand their reading ability without the negativity that so often comes when it’s labelled as homework! One of the positives that has come out of this dreadful situation we find ourselves in is that the planet has had a well earned rest. Our environmental programmes are a starting step for children and their families to make sure that we continue to keep our emissions low. Our walk once a week programme simply encourages parents to leave the car at home and walk to school once a week – the impact recorded has been quite amazing. But it doesn’t only help with lowering emissions; it also helps to tackle the ongoing and increasing issue of childhood obesity. All of our programmes are designed to be accessible to every child, no matter their postcode and 50% of the delivery costs are paid from charitable donations, fundraising events, grants and sponsorship; all of which have been significantly hit by the current situation. Added to this, the majority of grants available from trusts and foundations have been redirected towards frontline charities, making it even harder to secure funding for the issues that were there before and haven’t gone away. So we need your help! £50 would deliver one of our programmes to a class for a year. £500 would cover the costs of delivering to a whole school. £1000 is two schools or 840 children! We will come out of this but, without programmes like ours, the negative impacts on children will be generational – forever widening the gap of the most vulnerable in our community.