A Leeds gas distributor has donated money and building materials to an Armley-based charity to help build the city’s first container home project for the homeless.
innergy Group, which is one of the largest bottled gas distributors in the UK, has supported Vulnerable Citizen Support since its inception last year.
It has donated money and building materials to get the charity’s container home for the homeless off the ground, as well as generous cash donations towards Vulnerable Citizen Support’s food and baby bank which has seen a huge rise in demand throughout the pandemic.
innergy’s staff also make regular food and baby-related donations to the charity, which delivered over 117,000 meals and supported more than 500 new mums last year.
Gez Walsh, Managing Director of innergy Group, said:
“Vulnerable Citizen Support is doing some amazing work throughout Leeds to alleviate poverty and hardship and try and find a new pathway to help the homelessness crisis. At innergy, we are dedicated to giving back to our community and we’re delighted to have been able to support a home-grown charity which is making such a vital difference to people’s lives.”
Haydn Lee Jessop, from Farsley, is the man behind Vunerable Citizen Support. He says the first stages of the project are now fully underway and the first container is now nearly complete.
He has secured land to house the containers and has been donated four more containers with a saving of £10,000, which would have been the cost to buy them. He said:
“This is where we now unfortunately hit a problem… and we need your help!
“The containers are in Scotland … and we need to collect them in the next 4 weeks
“This usually would cost a massive amount but we have managed to get a favour to collect these which will cost us a fraction of the price but we are on a deadline!
“We are relying on the kindness of the community to help us raise £10,000 which will allow us to bring the containers from Scotland and pay the balance of the deposit and rent on the land to which they will be placed and to connect to mains supply.
“We also then can move our container from the storage it’s at now to enable us to get this project active “
This £10,000 will pay for
– the land securing – deposit and rent
– transportation of the four containers
– transportation of our current container to be placed on the land
– connection of power supply on site
People can contribute to the crowdfunder here.
Vulnerable Citizen Support has provided more than 117,000 meals to struggling families, helped with more than 500 baby bank referrals and provided support to hundreds of homeless families, individuals and rough sleepers from its welfare centre in Armley.
It is currently building a container home village for the homeless, which will provide accommodation for rough sleepers for six to twelve months while they receive an intensive package of support including employability training and rehabilitation with a view to moving on to a permanent home.
