Community Resilience

Times are difficult. 

How we support each other now can be the basis of a stronger community to manage the problems we will need to face in the future. 

The consequence of Covid and the economic downturn has disproportion-ately effected our community as with all others. Food and energy poverty is now effecting many millions of households and that includes Tattenhall. 

Whilst we do not know how many people might be facing food and fuel pov-erty locally, we believe there is a gap in this provision for some individuals or families to gain access to local supplies of emergency food help. Access to food bank supplies require a trip to Chester. 

Work has been developed in a partnership between the Spar, St Albans Church, the Park School, the Sports Club, Transition Tattenhall, Tattenhall Allotment Association and Sandy Bears Nursery to establish a Free Pantry here in the village. We hope that this will help to protect children, families and individuals by providing an emergency food source available 24/7 giving community support to people facing financial pressure. 

If you know of anyone needing this support please let them know that the FREE PANTRY is located in the yard behind the Sports Club. It will open for use from 10am from Friday 15th March. 

ANY QUERIES Text: 07826954441 

Donations – contact: Free Pantry transitiontattenhall@gmail.com

The consequences of Covid and the economic downturn have affected our community as with all others. Food and energy poverty are now effecting many households including in Tattenhall. 

One way support has been provided across the country is through Food Banks. In Tattenhall the Trussell Trust, in collaboration with Tattenhall Park Primary School and St Alban’s Church, have been making emergency food boxes available to families of children attending the school. This has been available throughout the term times and, to some degree, during school holidays as well.  

However, there is a gap in this provision for those individuals or families not in contact with the school and Transition Tattenhall is hoping to work with others to tackle this problem.

Work is now being developed between the Trussell Trust, St Albans, Tattenhall Park Primary School, Transition Tattenhall, Tattenhall Library, Tattenhall Allotment Association and the Spar to find ways of establishing a Free Pantry on the lines of similar services provided in Canada and some parts of the UK.  

One aspect of emergency food banks is the issue of stigma, particularly in small communities, where people using the supply might feel uncomfortable, or even be reluctant to use, the provision. So we need a solution that works to counter this for the communities here in Tattenhall.

The pantry could work in the following way:

• Transition Tattenhall raises funds to finance the scheme
• The Tattenhall Spar provides funded food boxes
• The scheme runs for an initial period of 3 months to assess its usefulness and access.
• The Trussell Trust designs the variety of Free Pantry food/household requirements or alternatively the Spar does that itself. 
• The Park School widens its access to include non school family who can access the supplies during school hours.
• The Library would also participate as an access point for collection.
• The Free Pantry offer is widely publicised to all families and individuals who deem themselves  in need of emergency food supplies.
• Access will be via a school/church/library and online text request.
• The project will require a small team of volunteers.
• The Allotments Assoc. is seeking to provide surplus veg during the season.
• Access to the Pantry would be for all residents in Tattenhall & District.

There are several unresolved issues from the above proposals which will need to be tackled as the project moves forward.

There are a number for other similar designs for community food access such as Community Fridges and Community Poverty services, but it feels that we need to design something that specifically fits the community of Tattenhall.

The Village Show on September 4th  in the Barbour Institute needs you!

We need stewards to facilitate the day. The role of a steward is to make sure entrants can place their exhibits,  help with recording the judges decisions, and oversee the public in the afternoon, then help clear up, and if possible help set up for an hour on Saturday evening.

The day starts at 9 am and finishes around 5. If you are there for lunch we provide a free lunch. If you can do only a part day on Sunday – a morning until after judging – around 1.30pm would be useful, or the afternoon from just before 2pm to oversee the public.

Without stewards the cant go on!! So it is really important role. However it does not preclude you entering any classes in the show. You can find the Show Schedule on Tattenhall.org, the Garden Society Facebook page or email Jen Benefield   Jenbenefield@icloud.com for a copy for you to print.

The idea of a repair cafe for Tattenhall came from our first Engagement Day back in October. For those for whom the idea of a repair cafe is a new thing – a repair cafe is a place where the public can bring broken household appliances, clothes, textiles, or blunt tools to be fixed on the day. The idea is that otherwise these would go to landfill and replacements purchased. Repair Cafes have the main objectives of reducing landfill, reducing consumption, but also they are good places to meet others with a similar idea. It is important to us that the equipment is generally low value and would not justify a professional repair, that it would otherwise be thrown away.

So we formed a small group of Transition Tattenhall members to make it happen.
The main requirement is skilled and willing volunteers to do the fixing. We were confident that in a place like Tattenhall there would be plenty of people willing to give up a Sunday morning to try to fix broken stuff, and we were right, we have a great team of volunteers who will try most things.
We realised we needed some money to cover room hire, we wanted at least 12 months, insurance, consumables and PAT test equipment for electrical items. So we set about raising money. Tattenhall Parish Council generously have pledged £500. And we set out crowdfunding with CWAC via the SpaceHive scheme. The crowdfunding scheme requires projects to demonstrate local support by getting pledges of funding from people of Tattenhall, CWAC would then add money from their various funding budgets. We started in April and within just 5 weeks we had 40 pledges of support from people in Tattenhall of nearly £1000 in total. That was tremendous. This support enabled us to be supported by CWAC and we had enough funds for the project to run for a year. We were off!

The first repair cafe, there will be one a month, took place last Sunday (31 July). There was a brief publicity campaign through Facebook to remind people of the repair cafe and ask them to bring their broken appliances etc. We collected our volunteer repairers, 4 for the first cafe, and we opened the doors at 10 in the morning.

From the start we were busy, there was a steady stream of people coming with equipment, clothing, blunt knives, broken table, tools, all sorts. Our receptionist was kept busy booking in clients, directing them to a suitable volunteer, and organising PAT testing. Our cafe was busy serving teas, coffees, biscuits for people while they waited to be seen, or equipment to be fixed.

In the two hours we took in 16 items, we fixed 6 in the morning, made recommendations for replacement parts/batteries for 3 items, we have 3 items still with volunteers having longer term work done and we failed with 4. Saving we think 12 items from landfill, and replacement. There was also a much conversation and interest in the room about the repairs, and about Transition.

The repair cafe is a monthly event. The next one is 28th August 10-12 at Barbour Institute. Don’t forget to bring your broken stuff that might be saved, bring your repairs on the day or you can book in at tattenhall.repair.cafe@gmail.com We will be always looking for handy and skilled volunteers, we need to give people a break and cover absences, so if you would like to volunteer as repairer please do get in touch.

Our weekly meditation sessions in the Church are held each Tuesday from 6:15 – 7pm

Meditation can help with reducing stress and anxiety, improve focus and clarity of thinking, and even improve how we sleep.

You can sit in silence or use headphones to follow along to your own app or audio. If you are new to mindfulness and meditation we can give you loads of ides to help get you started so please do get in touch. We are also able to offer a 50% discount on your first annual Headspace subscription so do get in touch for the unique discount code. You can reach us at transition.tattenhall@gmail.com

The sessions are free, but donations to the upkeep of the Church will always be welcome. This is a great opportunity to relax and reset in a quiet and beautiful setting. So do come along and find out more, all you need are warm clothes!