Mustard Tree’s Round-Up
Making a house a home
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The price of moving into an empty house
A recent Guardian article by Hilary Osborne perfectly illustrated why household donations for our Community Shops are so important. Rising prices coupled with the value of benefits falling is creating a widening gap for people who are already struggling to make ends meet.
There are no official figures for the number of people living in furniture poverty, but research done before the pandemic by the charity Turn2us suggested 4.8 million were without at least one essential household appliance such as a cooker or a fridge, and the problem is getting worse. Source – The Guardian1
In August, we made a video to show how white goods donations can make a real difference for someone in need, whilst reducing the amount of items that end up in Manchester and Salford landfills.
You can read more about our furniture gifting through our Medium article. If you think you can help by donating your pre-loved goods, please submit a furniture donation enquiry form and we’ll look at arranging a free collection.
On the ‘Ascent’
A big thanks to our corporate volunteers from Ascent, who helped us this week in our Food Club and Community Shop! If your team is interested in spending a day helping out at one of our hubs, please contact will.hall@mustardtree.org.uk or give us a call on 0161 228 7331.
NHS Scam
After our clients completed scam awareness training in our Computer Confidence class, one of our participants raised the below text message with us, which turned out to be a common scam doing the rounds.
Thanks to a raised awareness, they were able to identify the signs that the message was fake – in this case a personilsed number and non-official web address – protecting them from being defrauded – result!
Cavani painting auction
Special mention to our friend Tony Flynn of Salford Media, who arranged the auctioning off of a piece of artwork donated by artist Brian Gorman – raising £100 for our Eccles hub!
Thank you to John Mottershead who came out on top with the winning bid, and of course to Brian for donating the piece – you can read the full story here.
The rise in demand for ESOL
We’ve noticed a significant rise in people attending our weekly ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages) sessions, with a total of 88 learners visiting us on Wednesday alone.
The above graph illustrates the increase in individual learners and total attendance over the past several months. We are now seeking an experienced ESOL Trainer to join our team, with full details of the vacancy below.
Join our team
We have some new and exciting roles available for anyone looking to join our team as we navigate our way out of the pandemic – please see the live vacancies below:
Applications can be sent to recruitment@mustardtree.org.uk. The deadline for applications is Sunday 20th March.
Final Word
We don’t just accept furniture, we can also deliver large items purchased from our Community Shops for a small fee – thanks to whoever gave us the lovely feedback below!
Upcoming events:
Run the Manchester 10k or half-marathon for Mustard Tree (almost full!)
Mustard Tree Charity Abseil at the Trafford Centre
Can you help us combat poverty and prevent homelessness?
If you enjoy reading our newsletter and want to support our work, the best way you can do this is by joining the Real 10k and setting up a regular gift to help keep our services running. We have an aim to recruit 10,000 donors – each giving £5 a month – to help secure our charity for years to come – and create lasting change across Manchester and Salford.
Please join us in this mission by clicking the button below.
To our partners who are already supporting us with a monthly donation, please share this newsletter with friends, family members and colleagues – and thank you so much for all your ongoing support. Your kind donations are vital for us to continue our work and much appreciated by us all.
