ALDI CUMNOCK - AYR RD

NICE is a Community led anchor organisation inbedded in our local community since 2015. We have developed our community centre and we are proud of the work carried out in our community including our community café, mental health treatment rooms, food larder, charity shop, support for members of our local community and partnership work with various local agencies. We have been working for over 8 year being based centrally in our community with a focus on providing services and support which suits the needs of our community and its members. We know local residents well and work closely with them to use their skills and knowledge base in order to make our community a better place. NICE’s front facing relationship with the local community, community groups and statutory agencies built over the last 8 years, clearly demonstrates its experience and expertise in engaging with residents and groups at a local level enabling us to reach the most disengaged people and move their thinking towards self-reliance. NICE has build up a relationship and a lot of trust within our local community, we are seen as a community resource and an organisation that is approachable, honest and trustworthy in the services we provide. As our organisation started as local members of the community coming together to save a vital community asset, we have been recognised as an organisation run by the community, for the community. Our team has moved from being volunteer led to now having a full staff complement which has built its ability and capacity in Community support, Funding, Capacity building and Event & Activities delivery. We have built up a strong reputation with our local authority East Ayrshire Council from our inception in 2015. The process we have followed to acquire the community centre has been used as an example of good practice and an example for other community groups wishing to follow the same path as NICE. We found out in 2013 that Netherthird Community Centre was at risk of closure due to council cuts and was put onto a "risk of closure" list. A public meeting was held where all members of our community were invited to an open meeting within the community centre. We formed a committee from a group of local people who attended the meeting and set about setting ourselves up as a SCIO, creating governing documents and opening a bank account. We officially took over the running of the building via a community asset transfer and began to run the centre according to the wishes of those in our community still working with East Ayrshire Council to run our community food larder, warm welcome club, employability projects and other projects in our local community. Our project has recently went full circle and we have been succesful in gaining funding from the scottish land fund to enable us to purchase the community centre and bring it into community ownership.

We recently started our food bank due to the current covid pandemic as we had discovered that many people in our community were struggling to feed their families. We decided to take matters into our own hands to feed our community! So far we have helped, nursing homes, sheltered housing, elderly, people who are shielding and various families around the Kilmarnock Area, however this isn't enough there are still too many people going hungry and we want to feed them all!

The purposes of Corner Cupboard establishment and operations are the prevention and relief of food poverty in the Ayrshire area, the advancement of citizenship/community development and the relief of those in need by reason of age, ill-health, disability, financial hardship or other disadvantage in ways including :- 4.1 The provision of food to those identified as being in need of the services of the Foodbank; 4.2 Working with other local and national organisations to ensure those in food poverty and other disadvantaged people have access to the appropriate information to enable them to explore ways to make improvements to their life conditions and alleviate the hardship they are suffering or prevent any future hardship; and 4.3 working with other agencies to ensure those in food poverty and other disadvantaged people, armed with the appropriate information, have guidance and support to allow them to be proactive in improving their life conditions and alleviate the hardship they are suffering or prevent any future hardship. 4.4 To promote the provision with the object of temporarily relieving the conditions of life for the persons for whom the facilities are primarily intended