www.woodstreetmission.org.uk 1

Salford History Exhibition 2

Easter Appeal 3

Look Back at 2016 4

All Set for Read Mcr! 5

Juan-Ta Claus Visit 6

Great Manchester Run 7

Help Make A Difference 8

inside

HELPING CHILDREN AND FAMILIES SINCE 1869

ISSUE 8 l APRIL 2017

Our annual review 2016 is out and available on www.woodstreetmission.org.uk

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Welcome to our Spring newsletter. It has had a small makeover which I hope you like.

Firstly, thank you to everyone who supported our Christmas appeal. The project was a big success as you can see on page 6. There was a tremendous response from supporters – so much so that we had to stop accepting donations at one stage – our Christmas shop had over 1000 visits from happy and often relieved customers, and we got plenty of media coverage, thanks in part to the visit of a famous footballer. Overall, we were able to give out toys and food to the families of 4391 children. So in the words of seven year old Mercy who dropped us off a card, “Thank you for making us happy and for caring”.

We received some sad news recently. Marian O’Brien, a former service user, who spoke at our Manchester Histories festival event last summer, has passed away. Marian captivated the audience at the event with her memories of a seaside holiday at our Blackpool resort Squires Gate eighty years ago. Her story was both funny and poignant and highlighted the profound impact an adverse life event – her father’s death at a relatively young age – had on the whole family, as her mother struggled to bring up Marian and her four brothers by herself.

Marian’s story is similar to that of a lot of the families we help today and she was very pleased to be able to raise awareness about our work. We are grateful to her and hope it will encourage others to get in touch to share their stories

Roseanne Sweeney, CEO

NEWSPostOut

We are delighted our history exhibition Queues Clogs & Redemption will be exhibited in the Salford Museum and Art Gallery from June to November. The exhibition will have a number of new elements – a heritage video with stories of service users past and present, plus a new display featuring our former holiday resort Squires Gate in Blackpool, which gave tens of thousands of children a life changing experience in the first half of the twentieth century. The exhibition launch will have a business focus exploring our strong links with the business community. But there will also be a holiday themed event in July of wider interest.

For more event details go to our website www.woodstreetmission.org.uk

Just Like A Toff’s House!Can you remember going to Squires Gate as a young child? The holiday resort which opened in the 1920s made a huge impression on young visitors. As well as giving children the opportunity to see the bright lights of Blackpool for the first time, it had its own playing fields, swings and roundabouts and swimming pool. One child described it as just like “a big toff’s house”. We are collecting stories of people who had a holiday at the resort before it closed in the 1960s for our Post Your Memory campaign.

Contact chief executive Roseanne Sweeney at roseanne@woodstreetmission.org.uk for more information.

Salford

April 2017 | Wood Street Mission Post 3

Egg-stravaganza

Launched in 2015, SmartStart has a target to distribute one million pounds worth of uniform and school kit – enough to give every child living below the poverty line in Manchester and Salford a school uniform. So far we have distributed £323,000 worth of goods so we are almost a third of the way there. The project helps with the cost of school in a number of ways. We team up with a school wear supplier to kit out children for the new school year; operate a back-to-school shop in August; and distribute uniform and other every day school necessities through our community shop throughout the rest of the year. Contact our SmartStart Development Manager Mark Gaffney for more information by emailing mark@woodstreetmission.org.uk

We need volunteers for our busy community shop. If you are practical, like working with a diverse group of people, and are available on Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday mornings we would like to hear from you. The work is rewarding and travel expenses are reimbursed.

Contact our Centre Manager Des Lynch by emailing des@woodstreetmission.org.uk for details.

It’s one of our most popular and pun-laden appeals of the year. Our Easter appeal is well and truly underway. We will be collecting Easter eggs to give out to families until Friday 7 April. The families we help struggle to buy treats for their kids so it’s a nice way to make a difference. Call 0161 834 3140 for a collection or drop them off to our central Manchester premises Mon-Fri.

SmartStart Progress Report

Shop Volunteers Needed

£323,000

TARGET £1M

MANCHESTER & SALFORD

4 Wood Street Mission Post | April 2017

One BIG difference to local children

REVIEW OF 2016

5,000 visits to our community shop

15,000 children’s books given out at book clubs

£217,952 worth of uniform and school kit distributed

895 children given new high quality, warm winter coats

2,516 Twitter followers and 5,151 Facebook likes

Opened on a pilot basis in February, the shop allows parents to purchase children’s clothes, bedding, baby items, toiletries, as well as toys and books, with credit based on family size.

Over the year we held book clubs in community venues in Cheetham Hill, Hulme, Gorton, Langworthy, Ordsall, and Wythenshawe. Ruby Barnhill, star of the BFG movie, dropped into a special summer event at the Children’s Adventure Farm Trust in Cheshire to read to families.

SmartStart kitted out a record 2,313 children in brand new uniform in time for the start of the school year and hundreds more families were helped in our back-to-school shop. Our flagship project generated publicity on BBC Radio Manchester, Manchester Evening News, and the Times Education Supplement.

Every child should have a warm winter coat. But many families struggle to afford such a relatively expensive item. Thanks to the generosity of supporters, we were delighted to be able to give out over £20,000 worth of high quality, winter coats.

Our volunteers are supporters who want to get more involved in our work, young professionals from nearby businesses, and parents who have used our services and want to give something back.

Social media is an incredibly important way to generate donations, grow support for appeals, and get our message out. Facebook groups organise regular clothes collections for us, while our Twitter account has a large corporate following.

400 volunteers helped deliver our Christmas project

Volunteers Chris and Steve from WorldPay

Read our Annual Review of 2016 in full on our website www.woodstreetmission.org.uk

Deputy Mcr Lord Mayor Eddy Newman opening our Xmas shop

April 2017 | Wood Street Mission Post 5

All set for Read Manchester!

World Book Day Book Clubs Hit Rhythm

BOOK CLUBS

We are getting ready for Read Manchester, an initiative organised by Manchester City Council and the National Literacy Trust, to boost literacy across the city. Evidence shows that reading is the foundation for success at school and work and that children who read well are more likely to lead happier, healthier and productive lives. The campaign comprises activities to

promote reading and literacy across schools, businesses, community groups and libraries. Among other things, we will be participating in the campaign’s Book Bench Project by decorating a book bench with designs inspired by children’s books popular with our families. The book bench will be part of a colourful trail of book benches across the city over the summer months.

It was the 20th Anniversary of World Book Day on 2 March. The annual celebration of authors, illustrators and reading is now recognised in more than 100 countries around the world. We celebrated by giving out children’s books and over £1000 worth of dressing up costumes through the community shop. Many primary schools and pre-schools ask children to come into school dressed up as their favourite book character – something which can put pressure on families living on a low income.

Our first book club of the year was our biggest yet! Over 200 people attended the event in the World Irish Heritage Centre in Crumpsall which featured traditional Irish music and a ‘rhythm and rhyme’ session for under 5s. A huge thank you to our hosts for giving us such a warm welcome, the Hawksmoor restaurant for serving up a delicious lunch, and to the volunteer team from Carillion North West Electrification Project.

Woody plus minder welcoming families to the Irish centre

THANK YOU!

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Juan-Ta Claus Tops Successful Christmas Project Our Christmas Project was a roaring success! There were over one thousand visits to our Christmas shop, including one on the last day by Juan Mata, Manchester United and Spanish football star. The shop, and two toy fairs in Gorton and Langworthy, allowed parents choose toys and gifts suitable to give to their children as presents on the big day, rather than allocating them goods based on the gender and age of children. Festivities ended with a huge, noisy Christmas party at the Old Granada Studios with about 400 guests. Overall, we gave out toys and food to the families of 4391 children.

Amazing Response to AppealThank you to everyone who supported our appeal Christmas Should Be About More Than Survival. The response was amazing with 244 businesses, 67 churches and 44 schools, as well as hundreds of individuals, making donations. There was a wide variety of fundraising activity. Lakeland Picnic raised £3,000 from the sale of sausages at the Christmas Market, the Lowry Hotel hosted a festive lunch for 30 children from St Philip’s Church of England primary school in Salford, while Flixton Junior School contributed a huge haul of advent calendars. Thanks too Ian Jolley who gave us £800 worth of Lego, Maddie, Ruby and Sophie from St Johns Church Knutsford who asked for donations to our appeal rather than birthday gifts, and Janet who donated £300 worth of Love To Shop vouchers for older children.

Stormtrooper and fans at the Christmas party

Corrie star Jennie McAlpine with fundraiser Sophie and centre manager Des

Addleshaw Goddard Law Firm dropping off donations

Man Utd star Juan Mata

Christmas community shop

Great Manchester Run

We’re gearing up for the biggest challenge event of the year – the Great Manchester Run on Sunday 28 May. This year participants have the option of running a half marathon as well as 10K distance in the iconic event. In 2016 more than 30 runners completed the race in our striking red T-shirts raising over £6.5K. The Lowry Hotel (pictured above) had one the biggest teams and will be taking part again this year. All money raised will go towards our book clubs.

Great Manchester Run not for you? There are plenty of other challenge events to choose from including our annual abseil at the Bell Tower in the Trafford Centre on 17 September. For more information contact sophie@woodstreetmission.org.uk

April 2017 | Wood Street Mission Post 7

Send us your news and views Fundraising for Wood Street Mission? We would love to hear from you. You can send us news and photos of your fundraising activities to info@woodstreetmission.org.uk and we will try to publish as many as we can. Don’t forget you can also get in touch and comment on our work on Twitter and Facebook.

@WoodSt_Mission

WoodStreetMission

Art Battle

This giant cardboard statue of a fireman raised £400 for us in an online auction last October. Thank you to Lazerian Studio who made it over a 4 day period entirely out of cardboard and glue. It was designed for Art Battle Manchester 2016 – a regular event designed to make art more accessible by combining art and music in one venue. Overall, the event raised over £1200 for us.

Squeaky Clean Donations

We have had some fabulous donations of toiletries in recent months. A big thank you to staff at BASF Cheadle Hulme for donating four crates of children’s soaps and shampoos, and to Ascot International for contributing a large consignment of mouthwash. Toiletry staples are always in demand by the families we help. Products suitable for children and babies are especially welcome.

We have a new bigger van! A huge thank you to Michael Oliver and Oliver Valves for supplying it. The van collects donations from around the Greater Manchester area 5 days a week so is vital to our work.

Guardian quiz raises £7K

Thank you to the Guardian newspaper for making us the beneficiary charity of the NCASC charity quiz in November. While the mood of the conference was somber against a backdrop of public sector cutbacks, the atmosphere at the event in the Artisan restaurant was lively and competitive. The event, hosted by the Guardian’s public services editor David Brindle, raised £7,300.

Guardian Public Service Editor David Brindle and WSM CEO Roseanne Sweeney

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Wood Street Mission 26 Wood Street, Manchester M3 3EFTel: 0161 834 3140

@WoodSt_Mission

WoodStreetMissionEmail: info@woodstreetmission.org.uk

DONATE children’s clothes, bedding, uniform, toiletries, toys and books. Drop donations off to our central Manchester base or call 0161 834 3140 for a collection.

Support our EASTER APPEAL by donating Easter eggs and non-perishable food and treats by Friday 7 April.

Make a FINANCIAL DONATION via our JustGiving page or send us a cheque made out to ‘Wood Street Mission’.

Take on a CHALLENGE event – we are now recruiting for the Great Manchester Run,

Three Peaks Challenge and our terrifying annual abseil in September.

CHOOSE US as your charity of the year and get colleagues behind our ongoing appeals and fundraising activities.

VOLUNTEER! We need volunteers for our community shop in central Manchester and holiday and half-term book clubs Email des@woodstreetmission.org.uk for details.

Leave us a GIFT IN YOUR WILL and help future generations of children in need. Contact us for our legacy booklet.

Make a difference Every year we help improve the lives and life chances of 7000 children in Manchester and Salford. Here’s how you can help

Wood Street Mission is a children’s charity based in the centre of Manchester. More than one in 3 local children is living in poverty. We help children and families living in poverty in Manchester and Salford by alleviating the day to day impact of poverty and improving life chances.

Registered charity number: 1078337

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Ruth’s story“I live with my children in a property with no central heating. Once winter comes we live and sleep in one room. I prioritise bills and food, there’s no extra money. At school they often ask for contributions to activities. It’s embarrassing to have to go to the head and explain that you can’t afford things. My daughter’s friends say “Oh your mum doesn’t pay” and that’s hard to hear. Everything would be so much harder if Wood Street wasn’t there.”