Awarded: £5,000 from Pen y Cymoedd for decking, patio area, fareshare annual subscription, signage and greenhouse
“We have linked to the Under the Sky project and we also had GroundWorks in to help with the planting of herbs, fruit and vegetables. The pupils learned a lot about sustainability and understood the importance of reducing food waste. Anything that was grown, was then then shared in the shop with customers from the community.
The pupils in each year group have also been running the shop on a fortnightly basis and have made cakes and biscuits to sell in the shop and we have had one coffee morning to raise funds for McMillan – parents really love the fact that pupils have made the produce and our coffee mornings are always well attended.
We have used questionnaires to ask the community about our shop. The feedback was extremely positive and under the circumstances with the living crisis they felt it was of really benefit to them, pupils were extremely helpful, and the shop was well stocked.
We have also got links with the local crèche in which we now offer ‘uniform recycling’ and also donate to the local food bank. We also have 12 volunteers and 3 of them have managed to gain qualifications in level 2 food hygiene and they all express how much they enjoy helping and supporting the community.
We have been able to continue to offer produce to the community as a pay as you feel shop, this has helped so many families with the ‘cost of living crisis’ at the moment. We have been able to teach the pupils more about sustainability and they have had an active role in running our shop.
Without funding this project would not be able to run and would not have been able to support so many in the community.”