Sharewear uses a combination of individual referrals into our client centres and bulk outreach deliveries to poverty and crisis alleviation organisations to combat clothing poverty in several counties of the UK. We serve an average of 28,000 people per year, supporting them through our clothing choices into education and training; employment; recovery and recuperation; rehabilitation and integration -- as well as giving them the basic capacity to function in life on a day to day basis.
Processing 6 to 7 tonnes of clothing donations per month , and getting them to people who need them, is the work of many hands. Volunteer numbers are decreasing nationally, as people take paid work to combat their rising costs. At the same time, thousands of asylum seekers are currently housed in Nottinghamshire hotels, unable to work, but desperate to give back to their communities. The few already on our team describe how much their English has improved through volunteering; how welcome, included and valued they feel, and how many more in their hotel could join our team if they could afford the bus fare. The refugee organisations we support with clothing describe how frustrated they are that we can’t fund travel for their clients to volunteer with us, as they are staggered by the difference they have seen in the mental health and attitude of those few who have made it to volunteering so far. These organisations, unable to solve the travel dilemma themselves, have reached out to us for a solution.
YOUR donation IS that solution. Each £5 donation will fund an asylum seeker to volunteer for one day and £160 will fund a 50-day pass, guaranteeing us 3 to 4 months of volunteering of 3 or 4 days per week, and offering them 3 to 4 months of improved mental wellbeing, integration and English language acquisition.