I can hardly believe that a year has passed by since we opened Gateway Women’s Centre!  The vision has been to be able to provide a sanctuary where women are able to come to receive emotional support. Women can now access support and advice at our drop-in on a Wednesday and Thursday. Alternatively they can take part in one of our art workshops, use the the internet café  or just pop in for a  coffee and a chat.

Over the past year we have seen how great and valuable the need of this Centre is and how, to many women, it has become literally a lifeline!  We have been able to support and befriend women on many different levels, supporting with housing, providing emotional support during periods of crisis, accompanying clients to meetings with the benefits office, social services, doctors, hospitals, which has enabled them to feel supported in areas where they may have felt challenged or alone.

Another area of support has been our food store, and we have seen an increase over the last year of women who have benefited from a food parcel, and we envisage that this will increase with the continued cuts to benefits and the rising costs of living!

We receive regular referrals from Social Services, Doctors, Health Visitors, and the mental health recovery team in the city who have seen how valuable the support we offer is and the difference it has made to many of their clients.  As a result of this we are gradually increasing our team of  committed and dedicated  staff and volunteers, which has enabled us to expand in the support we offer, which is to restore hope, dignity, confidence and value back into the lives of the women.

But even more than this, what must be acknowledged is the outpouring of God’s love through  a committed and dedicated team of women who are willing to give their lives to enable others to know their worth.  We can say that not us, but God is working out His promise to restore  as He leads us into the next season of Gateway Women’s Centre.

In 2011 Project Antifreeze handed out 555 sleeping bags totalling a cost of £6000!

368 of the bags handed out last year were given to first time rough sleepers. 49 people were in need of up to 3 sleeping bags last year due to prolonged rough sleeping periods. Those who have spent a long time rough sleeping are known as ‘entrenched rough sleepers’.

In the summer we can hand out bags that are lightweight and only cost £6 each, but in the winter we buy heavy duty sleeping bags to keep people warm in severe weather as cold as -19 degrees! Winter sleeping bags cost approximately £15 each.

We are very excited about our latest order, shown in the picture, this was a large order of 216 bags made up of summer and winter weight bags!

We would like to give a very special thank you to Bishop Hannington Church and Sheddingdean Baptist Church who had special collections for us at Christmas raising a total of £3000 between them! These very generous donations were able to pay for this large order which will hopefully last us till June.

We would also like to thank AMG – Vango for providing sleeping bags to us at such an amazing price!

2011 was spectacular in growth and impact, it is impossible to calculate the impact of our Charity. We started in 1997 a tiny little project, with amazement and thankfulness we celebrated having had 2.5 million pounds go through our bank account over the years and straight out to the most at need in our City.  Never in the history of Off The Fence have our services been so needed.  Recession has increased the number of homeless in Brighton & Hove by 40% in the last year. The new government legislation on the capping of housing benefit will mean that 700 more families face eviction within this city alone.

Would you consider doing something spectacular by giving a gift towards the capital appeal? Every penny counts! Your support in the past has allowed us to help thousands of people, into the Antifreeze Homeless Centre. Last year alone we had over 7400 visitors and our night outreach met with over 1600 homeless.

We are very grateful for your support, prayers and partnership over the years, please help us to do something long term that will be extra ordinary!

Thousands of online shops are committed to giving a percentage of what you spend online to charity. So now as you do your online weekly shop you could also be providing a meal for someone sleeping rough in our City.  A quick DVD purchase in your lunch break could also provide money to run lunch clubs in our local schools. It couldn’t be simpler to ‘Give As You Live‘.

Start shopping for a good cause today!

Achieve Intelligence are a new start up consultancy firm providing Business Intelligence.  We are very grateful for their partnership with us and are looking forward to how we can work together in the future.

If you run a business and would like to join our scheme then please do email kath.cunningham@offthefence.org.uk or click here Business Support.

The guests were predominantly from the Brighton & Hove area, however, there were a few faces that had travelled from as far as Ashford and Bognor!  At approximately 9:30am Salvation Army Ashford’s fears of a continental breakfast were put to rest as Emma and Les Heal served up a delicious Full English! With the kind support from Starbucks we were able to wash down well cooked eggs with wonderful fresh coffee.

The day’s teaching was led by Dave Steell, the pastor of One Church Brighton. Although Dave is now a pastor and no longer a youth worker he has great knowledge and was able to share his experiences of Church youth work with us. Dave taught us to focus on who we are in Christ and what that means for our individual projects. Although this may seem a passive angle to take with regards to youth work, Dave assured us examining ourselves leads to action. The closer we walk with God and the more certain we are of ourselves the more God is able to use us for His glory. He also encouraged us that we don’t have to do what is pleasing to everybody else but do what is pleasing to the Lord.

In a small break we had ‘Stories from the City’ where we learnt about the plans for new Christian secondary school in Brighton and Hove (The King’s School) and also about Prayer Spaces in Schools.

Dave Steell stepped up again to share from Psalm 23 and how it tells us to look back and see grace and mercy behind us rather than infront . He taught us to be encouraged by what we have already achieved and to be aware that God’s grace and mercy is with us in our work. He taught us not to invent projects and hope that God turns up at them but to work alongside God and what He wants to see happen in the city.

Sainsburys gave a day to Gateway Women’s Centre, where their customers were invited to buy one extra item of shopping and donate it to the Women’s Centre.  The response from Sainsbury’s customers and staff was overwhelming and by the end of the day we had a trolley full of Christmas treats and gifts.  We are so grateful to Sainsburys for their support and on behalf of the team here and the women we have been able to support through their kind generosity we would like to say a very BIG Thank you!

Here at Project Antifreeze we had the privilege of being part of this first run of the new head count. We are pleased to announce that the outcome has produced a far more realistic number of rough sleepers. Is official overall figure is 117 known rough sleepers, 74 of which have been found at their sleeping site and 43 that have been understandably more secretive with the location in which they sleep. This exercise has been very useful to be part of and has shown some interesting facts about the levels of homelessness. For example, 83% of clients at Antifreeze are male and 17% female. With regards to the nationality of out clients we have seen that 53% were British, 10% eastern European, 9% other European countries with the other 28% being a combination of various ethnic minorities.

From the clients perceived needs in priority was:

1.) Housing

2.) Dealing with alcohol addiction

3.) Employment & Training

The big questions for us to ask, now we have a truthful figure is:

How can we best continue to help these 117 known rough sleepers?

The band ‘No Town like Motown’ were incredible and got the crowd dancing to all their Motown favourites.  The evening was a huge success and great fun for all who attended. Our thanks go out to those who turned up for this enjoyable pre Christmas event and special thanks to Robert and ‘No Town like Motown’ for making the evening a night to rememeber!

A Big thank you to everyone who made some gorgeous things, enabling us to fund raise for Gateway Women’s Centre.