RE-FRESH
Project Aims
Our project at Refresh involves going to the Salvation Army in Reading every Wednesday and running our ‘Speedy Skills’ Workshops with the clients. We help them apply for jobs, create CVS, run IT based skills sessions and also have started a bike business with them to aid them for the future – and change there lives for the better.
The bike project will further help transfer live skills and open up new opportunities for the beneficiaries. By next academic year we will be imposing more structured sessions based on the beneficiaries needs, continuing the football games and ideally getting a number of the beneficiaries who have engaged with the CSCS card practice to help volunteer on a local community project.
What makes Re-Fresh a great project?
The Salvation Army provides a home for Stage 1 homeless clients – we hope to make a real life changing impact on the clients there, which is sustainable and addresses the real need. We hope to empower the clients and get them on the road to a path of independence using our knowledge for long-term solutions. We give the clients confidence and skills to improve their standard of living.
Project History
Refresh project has come a long way since the summer of 2014. Last summer, the ReFresh team had just 2 active members and no project partner. But what we had was a shared desire to adopt an entrepreneurial approach to help change the lives of the homeless in the Reading community. Since September 2014 we have been building a relationship with the clients at the Salvation Army in various ways. We entered Willow House with no preconceived ideas about the beneficiaries and began engaging on many levels with just a brief understanding of the different stages of homelessness.