Chorlton homeless charity changes direction after lockdown causes shop to close
- Chorlton charity shop changes to outreach programmes after shop is closed during lockdown
- Charity has been carrying out food responses and rehoming initiatives
- Reach Out staff working with other Manchester-based charities to help homeless
A homeless charity in Chorlton has changed direction after covid caused its shop to close during lockdown.
Reach out to the community is a Manchester-based homeless charity that was founded four years ago.
The charity initially started as a charity shop, but after lockdown forced the shop to close the charity has turned to outreach programmes and food responses to help the homeless.
Covid had a huge impact on the way the charity was run.
Abigail Hardy who works with the charity said: “We’ve been very impacted by Covid, we had to basically change what we were doing, our main source of income was our charity shop, during the first lockdown we had to shut down the first shop completely.
“It’s made us focus a lot more on the community response. So we are doing a lot more food parcels and stuff like that, so I think we are going to carry on where we can, doing what we’re doing but also building able to build on our support work and outreach sort of roles.”
Reach Out has now teamed up with fellow homelessness charities to help rehouse people indoors during the cold weather and pandemic. One of their partners is Men’s Room Manchester.
Abigail said: “Men’s room also have a good outreach program to help with cold weather.
“They were out with us on that Wednesday we are hoping to do much more of it, we are showing them around South Manchester, and hotspots where people sleep and stuff like that.
“So, we can work in partnership when the weather does drop below zero. We are working in partnership to build up the outreach team.”
