Our first wishes are of course for everyone’s health and wellbeing, and that our priorities right now are on reducing and preventing the spread of Covid-19 and also on supporting and helping neighbours and friends across our community.
Whilst, inevitably, the Community Shop is pausing temporarily with anything involving face to face activities, work is continuing with other plans, including finalising the Lease with the Parish Hall Committee and working on the detailed building plans as required by local Building Control.
Given the current situation with the slow release from Lockdown, we are now in a position to progress with starting the groundworks in preparation for the arrival of the Portacabin for the Shop Building. At the time of writing, the details are that sometime during late May work will commence in the Parish Hall Car park on the utility connections and the concrete base for the building. This is outdoor work and will involve only one or two people at a time, and of course the social distancing rules will be followed at all times! With the current good weather and the opportunity to get on with the work whilst the Hall is not in regular use, the hope is that we will be in a position to organise the delivery of the Portacabin to the site sometime in June. This will be an important milestone in the creation of our Community Shop – please look out for further updates in the next Parish News and also on Facebook.
We have also been continuing to make further applications for funding from local and national grant awarding bodies. Early in the new year, we submitted a substantial application to a local fund through the Cornwall Community Foundation (CCF) and were expecting to hear from this in mid March. There was an inevitable delay as the CCF directed their energies towards emergency local fundraising in response to the current Coronavirus situation. We did eventually hear the good news that the Community Shop has been successful and awarded £500. Although this is less than the amount we had applied for, we are grateful to have received this award in these current circumstances. We have some other applications, albeit for similar modest amounts of funds, and are keeping everything crossed that these will also be successful. This brings our total fundraising to a total figure in the region of £29,000, an amazing amount raised to support the development of our Community Shop!
Our work on fundraising continues. Whilst there may be some delays as Fundholders prioritise their activities to those directly connected with the current crisis; we are positive that over time we will be able to find the further funding needed. We will keep you updated on progress.
Finally, as the plans for the Community Shop now start to move into the ‘building phase’, we are also beginning to think ahead to organising the Volunteers to work in the Shop. Last year, over 60 people expressed an interest in working as Volunteer in the Community Shop and we are now in the process of contacting everyone who put their name forward. If you want to contact someone from the Steering Group to talk about volunteering to work in the Shop or if anything else has changed for you then please do contact Sue Morrish, Company Secretary for the St Dominick Community Shop CBS.
Thank you as always for your continuing support, and please keep safe and well during these challenging times.