We love to hear stories of celebrations and success and love sharing these with you even more! So when Liz Pilling, volunteer at Community Cuppa, Church Aston, sent us this wonderful write up and beautiful photos, we just had to share the good news with you!
When we opened Community Cuppa in September 2021 our hope was to create a space where members of our church and local community could come together over a cuppa, to build relationships and connections especially after the isolation of various lockdowns. From our humble begins of a few people after Wednesday morning communion service we have become a hub for the community on a Wednesday. We were a place for Ukrainian refugees and host families to meet, and over the colder months of last winter secured a grant to be a warm space to open over longer hours. We have achieved so much over the last 2 years.
In May 2022 our weekly guest figures were just reaching around 20-25 most weeks, we had 2 volunteers each week and were open 10.30-12. We were providing tea and coffee, and homemade cakes. Our average donations were less than £10 (although I am keen to note that this is absolutely not why we do this, and we pride ourselves in offering this service for free).
Over the summer our numbers began to increase and by September last year (our first anniversary) we received the grant from Telford and Wrekin Council to become a warm space. By then our numbers were increasing to around 35-40 each week, with increased opening hours of 10.30 – 3pm. The additional hours and numbers meant that we needed more volunteers and we were thrilled to welcome on board some new community volunteers, as well as some who had been Community Cuppa guests over previous months. We began running 2 shifts of volunteers, and needed 3 each shift to cope with the extra numbers in the morning. We purchased more tablecloths, mugs, and other items to ensure our café feel continued, from grant funds. We were also very blessed with the donation of name badges for all our volunteers. One of our volunteers fostered a wonderful relationship with Catherine’s Bakery in Newport, who donated bread and cakes to us every week, and also organised easy to heat, rehydratable foods for us to be able to serve light lunches in our warm space. We also built a great relationship with the warm space team at St Michael’s Church, Lilleshall who benefitted from any leftovers from our bakery donation for their warm space on a Thursday. We began partnering with the Independent Living Centre who came every month to demonstrate their products to our guests.
By early January we were regularly having 40-50 guests each week, donations around £30. We had an Activities Coordinator in post for a few months (funded by the grant) and had activities running every week. These included chair yoga, art lessons, nutrition talks, photography sessions, bingo/quiz, afternoon tea, and present swaps. Games and art activities, as well as a few children’s toys are always available every week. We had a core community of around 30 guests who came every week. We continued to supply a safe place for people in the community to spend time, and meet others. The chair yoga and art classes proved so popular that we have continued to offer these on a weekly basis.
In April our grant for funding the warm space ran out. As a result we made some decisions on what we could offer moving forward. It was very clear that the space we had offered was very much needed and welcomed by the community, we feel that we are very much at the heart of the community on a Wednesday morning, and every week we have new people joining us. The last 2 hours of our warm space was not used as well as we have hoped, so we
decided to reduce the hours, while still offering more that we had originally. We now run from 10am-1pm, and require 4 volunteers on shift for each session as we are often serving more than 60 guests – our last few weeks as a warm space were between 75 and 88.
Moving forward to today, we have just celebrated our 2nd anniversary with a birthday party. We now offer tea (caffeinated/decaffeinated, plus various herbal and fruit options) and coffee (caffeinated/ decaffeinated, both filter and instant available to cater all tastes), squash, homemade cakes, teacakes (if available), and fruit. Our costs on these are more than covered by our donations each week. We continue to offer a weekly art space – which has been a lifeline to some members of our community and these volunteers have recently been instrumental in staging and hosting our annual Arts Festival in St Andrews church. We have benefitted over the last 6 months from a grant from Sports England, which allowed us to continue funding our chair yoga free of charge to our community. This has been a wonderful resource, supporting some of our elderly guests recovering from illnesses and helping to prevent falls. We have recently secured additional funding from Waitrose to enable this to continue into the new year, and aim to keep this provision as an essential resource for all in our community who need it. We continue to host the Independent Living Centre every other month, and we are a drop in centre for Citizens Advice Bureau on 2nd and 4th Wednesdays each month. We also have regular visits from our PCSOs, and charities and companies to give us useful information for our community, for example we have some information on scams awareness in a couple of weeks.
In recent weeks we have carried out a feedback survey of our guests and found that around 70% have been coming for over a year, and a similar number come most weeks. About 35% of our guests have used the yoga. When asked what they liked best about Community Cuppa the most popular responses were meeting friends and chatting, being in a friendly and welcoming atmosphere, and the friendly volunteers. Many also mentioned a renewed community spirit and finding out about local events. Community Cuppa has grown and become more than I think even the biggest dreamers amongst us could have dreamt. We are reaching people in the community who have a real need, in a way that we have never been able to do before. These are people who do not come to church, may never have been to church, but see us living out our faith every week. We offer a place of welcome and safety that they may not have always had before. We have many stories of wonderful encounters with our guests, where God has most certainly been at work, in which we have all been blessed. We continue to feel that we are called to serve God with the provision of Community Cuppa in Church Aston.
We have been so blessed with provision in the form of funding, volunteers, material resources, food and prayer over the last 2 years. We are so thankful for all the support from our church family, and those drawn in to this venture from the wider community, however big or small a part they may feel they have played. A massive thanks especially to our amazing teams of volunteers, without whom we would not be able to function, we are very blessed to have them all.