SOFEA

It's Christmas time at SOFEA! Yesterday we had a wonderful lunch at the Didcot Civic Centre with lots of delicious food prepared by our staff and learners. From everyone at SOFEA, we'd like to wish you a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! #itschristmastime #merrychristmas2024 #HappyNewYear2025

As Christmas approaches, it was all hands on deck at the Didcot Civic Centre where SOFEA staff were busy getting everything ready for the Christmas Lunch for staff and learners. We'd like to take the opportunity to thank Dawsongroup for letting us use two minibuses free of charge so that staff and learners from the Milton Keynes site could attend. Check in tomorrow to see all the photos from an afternoon of festive fun! #itschristmastime #festivefun #ChristmasDinner

Lovely to have John Boumphrey from Amazon on site for a half day last month. Corporate partnerships are key to charities fulfilling their missions. We look forward to working with Amazon in 2025 to support the work of SOFEA and having John and his team back again! Noel McCarthy #CorporatePartnerships

The results are in for this year's Big Give Christmas Challenge. THANK YOU so much for helping us reach and exceed our target of £60k. In total, together we’ve raised £62,355. That's simply sensational! See the total online here: https://lnkd.in/eBi3E3n4 Thank you to everyone that’s spread the word, shared a post or donated. You're all superstars! We’d also like to take this opportunity to thank our Champion Funder, The Reed Foundation. Lastly but by no means least, we want to say a huge thank you to our pledge funder for the campaign, The Will Houghton Foundation, who together with Mint Velvet, the British women’s fashion brand, matched that pledge and set us up for a successful campaign. Without them and all your individual donations, we would not have exceeded our Big Give Target. #ChristmasChallenge

Thanks for your kind words Zion Johnson. Fitness Fusion is going from strength to strength. Thank you and the MK Community Foundation for your support 💚

There's just 24 hours left of this year's Big Give Christmas Challenge! Every donation you make is doubled at no extra cost to yourselves. Thank you to everyone that has donated so far or spread the word about our fundraiser but there's still a way to go and we need your help! If you haven't already, please consider donating by clicking on this link. https://lnkd.in/eBi3E3n4 Each donation will be matched and gift aid, if eligible, will be added! Why donate to SOFEA? Because we enable people to transform their lives through one or more of our programmes that we've been running for 10+ years. Here's a snippet of what Michael (pictured right) had to say about his time at SOFEA. "SOFEA has helped me overcome the feeling of self doubt. The work experience at SOFEA helped me gain confidence and improved my mental health. I participated in wellbeing session at SOFEA with Niki as well as critical thinking sessions with Sam and gym session with Roman." "I took part in visits to the woods with Roman and Kaz where I did character building activities. All of this helped me gain confidence and build a sense of self worth." "Being at SOFEA has increased my self-esteem, strengthened my work ethic and made me more social. By playing table tennis and eventually joining the team and completing work experience in the warehouse, I have gained skills and maturity by being given the leeway to make mistakes and be myself. I am less impulsive and think more before I act compared to when I first started with SOFEA." Please donate so that we can support even more people like Michael. Thank you 💚 #ChristmasChallenge #Fundraiser #EnablingPeopleToTransformTheirLives

On Day 4 of the Big Give 2024, we'd like to highlight some of our learners' stories.    At SOFEA, supporting young people who might have struggled with GCSE qualifications or finding employment is a huge part of the work we do. Max Skidmore, a former learner at SOFEA, had found it difficult to find meaningful work in the past. However, thanks to the tailored support on offer in our Employability programme, Max was able to find work as an Online Picker at Iceland.   Drawing on his experience of picking food orders at SOFEA, Max was asked about his new job at Iceland, “It all boils down to how you prepare for the job. Considering SOFEA did exactly the same food picking, it became second nature to me. If I could pick for multiple food banks then I knew I had to apply for the role of Online Picker.”   To help us support more young people like Max, please share his story and know that for every Big Give donation we receive, that amount will be doubled!   https://lnkd.in/eBi3E3n4 #ChristmasChallenge

Our Big Give Christmas Challenge is LIVE and so far we've raised over £20k of our £60k target. Every donation made to our SOFEA campaign via BigGive.org between 3rd and 10th December at midday will be doubled. That’s right - DOUBLED. https://lnkd.in/eBi3E3n4 So whatever you can give, no matter the size, every donation will make double the difference in enabling young people to transform their lives. We’d really appreciate it if you could share the campaign with your friends, family or social networks - anyone who may be interested in having their donation doubled! Thank you! https://lnkd.in/eBi3E3n4

ICYMI our sites in Didcot flooded as a result of Storm Bert back on Sunday 25th November. The team have worked incredibly hard to get our FareShare operation back up and running this week whilst work continues in our Community Space to get that operational, in order to welcome back our learners in the New Year. We're hugely grateful to ITV news for telling our story. Here's our CEO Richard Kennell filming with their reporter on Tuesday 26th November when the water level was at it's highest. We're pleased to report the water has receded and the clean up effort continues unabated. Thank you to all of our Community Food Members (CFMs), beneficiaries and Community Larder leads, volunteers and members for your patience during this exceptional period. Thank you to all of our food suppliers and the teams from FareShare UK HQ, who have juggled deliveries for us or backhauled as best they can to support our efforts to return the warehouse back to capacity. And thank you to our sister site SOFEA | FareShare South Midlands for your ongoing support! #flooding #itvmeridian #surplusfood #foodredistribution #onwards

It's Day 2 of the Big Give Christmas Challenge 2024 🎄 We've been blown away by the support we've received after 24 hours of the campaign going live! Thank you to everyone that has donated! If you haven't heard of the Big Give Christmas Challenge, it's a wonderful opportunity to have any donation you make, doubled between the 3rd and 10th December at midday. So we can effectively double the difference your donation makes. There has been an increase in demand for the services that SOFEA provides which means an increase in our day-to-day running costs. As we recover from the recent flooding, we want to make sure that our services are fully accessible to the young people that need us. Your support can make all the difference. Click the link in our bio, or click here to donate: https://lnkd.in/eBi3E3n4 #BigGive #ChristmasChallenge2024 #SOFEA #Donate #ThankYou