Lads’ cash plea for charity status in their mission to help homeless
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A GROUP of lads from Manchester have embarked on a mission to help the city’s homeless that has been supported by hundreds of local people in just a few weeks.
Cold Hands Warm Hearts was set up earlier this year, with the aim of making sure no rough sleepers in Manchester are going hungry or without essentials.
But co-founder Jamie Lilley says there’s a significant hurdle they need to get over to be able to expand further - they need to raise thousands of pounds to be able to obtain a formal charity registration.
The organisation was set up when Jamie’s friend Daniel Goodier read an M.E.N. article, about the tragedy of a man who died sleeping rough in a city centre doorway aged just 25.
The men chipped in £30 each for some pizzas and went out on a cold winter’s evening where they were stunned by the scenes in the city centre.
“We went to Market Street and honestly it was shocking how many people were there,” Jamie said.
“It was around 10pm and there must have been around 50 to 60 people sleeping rough who we went and fed pizzas to.”
Jamie says lockdown is likely to have added to the rough sleepers’ anguish, as the number of people in the city centre to give them food or donations has fallen dramatically.
Now, the group has a schedule where they hand out food and essentials such as sanitary pads and clothes twice a week.
Jamie says the group has given out 90 pizzas, over 120 Pot
Noodles, 74 packed lunches, and more than 30 trays of potato hash in the space of three weeks.
“In under a month we went from basically nothing to growing to a team of 18, with a storage unit, and hundreds of donations,” he added.
The success of the new organisation quickly drew the attention of large businesses, who often have a budget for charitable donations.
But the companies all back out when they realise the group is not a registered charity, Jamie said. “We found that we had to prove that we can earn £5,000 in donations to be able to apply to be a registered charity,” he adds.
The lads therefore set up a JustGiving page, with the aim of reaching the magical £5k total and being able to apply for formal charity status.
Anyone wishing to donate to Cold Hands Warm Hearts can do so on their JustGiving page.