How you’re helping through You Give We Give: The new Community Shop store, Beechwood
The Community Shop is breaking barriers and winning awards for doing it. Selling high-quality food and household products to its members at a low cost, the chain won a Queen’s Award for Enterprise in 2020. The next to open, Community Shop Beechwood in Birkenhead, will be the seventh store of the UK’s first social supermarket chain.
Since January, You Give, We Give has raised over £3m. This continues to help and support our charity partners, including the new Community Shop. Your generosity during this period has also helped The Felix Project deliver over 16m meals to people in need.
The new Community Shop store in Beechwood, Birkenhead
On Wednesday 23rd June the big scissors will come out to snip the ribbon at the opening of The Community Shop, Beechwood, Birkenhead. The new branch will support an estimated 750 members of the local community and bring eight jobs to the area.
The Community Shop, a sister organisation to The Company Shop that was started in Yorkshire more than 40 years ago, is open to members who live locally, receive government funded support and want to make a positive change in their lives. Members can buy heavily discounted products that have been donated by manufacturers and retailers, like Ocado. The profits from the shop are ploughed into the community hub, where members can get support with personal development. The hub teaches everything from cooking and home budgeting to interview skills and business courses. The building will also be home to a community kitchen, which will offer delicious, nutritious food to Community Shop members, with children eating for free.
All this was possibly due to capital funding raised by our You Give, We Give scheme, and Onward Homes who provided the building free of charge. We support a number of local communities through You Give We Give. Last year the scheme donated over £8m to support food banks and social enterprises working to fight UK food poverty.
How your donations have made a difference
Read this recent email from a member of The Community Shop, Kirkdale, Liverpool to see how your donations make a real difference:
“You recently opened in L4, Walton. I just want to thank you. I admit I had preconceptions about the shop, thought it might be like a food bank, thought it might be scraps of veggies etc. I was embarrassed to sign up, if I’m honest. But, I have little hungry mouths to feed and am as many people, especially at the moment, struggling to make ends meet. With a limited budget and a lot of mum guilt I hated sometimes having to serve up the frozen ‘chicken’ shapes week after week. But you do what you have to do, and with as much pride as you can muster.
Since coming to your shop, almost daily, I have a fridge with Marks and Spencer’s chicken, the baby is coming home from nursery today to fresh raspberries and yoghurt, and we will be having organic mince spag bol for tea and a posh cheesecake afterwards! I used to work out how much it would cost before getting to the till, now it’s always so, so much less. I know this email sounds awfully gushy, but we are a society quick to complain when something goes wrong, so I wanted to be the one quick to praise when things go right. And you have got it right. So thank you for being round the corner and helping me to make the very best of what I have. You really are making a difference.”
We’re really grateful to everyone who’s donated through You Give We Give. If you’d like to contribute during your next shop – or help someone else to do so – the details are here.