Charity helping homeless searching for new home - The Leamington Observer

Charity helping homeless searching for new home

Leamington Editorial 4th Oct, 2015 Updated: 28th Oct, 2016   0

A HOMELESS charity needs a home of their own after discovering their current premises is to be demolished.

Helping Hands Leamington, Warwick and Kenilworth, which supports some 30 people a month with donations of food, clothes and furniture, is looking for somewhere new to store items which have been given to them.

Their current storage premises – a referee hut at at Racing Club Warwick Football Club ground – is being demolished as it is no longer fit for purpose.

But the building was already becoming too small to hold all the donations received by the charity.




Lianne Kirkman, who runs Helping Hands, says they are even having to use empty garages to store items.

The mum-of-two, who runs the charity and also works as a practice nurse, told the Observer: “We help so many people, from those who are homeless to women and children running away from domestic abuse.


“Most recently we have been helping a girl who was living in a garage but now has her own place which needed furnishing. The charity has supplied her with essential items to help her get on her feet.”

“We also run the soup kitchen in Leamington twice a week and have donations coming in from local companies and the public, who love to contribute by buying bread and fillings for sandwiches and donating clothes, shoes and blankets.

“We were recently given 50 sleeping bags from a gentleman who had attended Reading festival and collected all of the left over sleeping bags and donated them to us.

“Obviously with all the donations we receive on a daily basis from people wanting to help local families in need and the homeless in Leamington, we need a storage facility to operate from.

“We have garages around the town that we use but it’s not ideal and we really need a space where we can work from to sort the donations. It also needs to be somewhere donators can drop off too.”

Lianne says she has been to look at a number of potential storage places, but they have all been too expensive.

To help raise money the charity is hosting a sponsored sleep out on October 23 in Leamington.

Visit www.gofundme.com/helpinghandslwk to donate or email [email protected] to find out more.

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