Parson Cross Initatve Projects Annual Report 2021 Registered Charity 1172288 ## **Report from the Chair** It has, as I’m sure many will understand, been another very strange year. Another year still dominated by the Covid19 pandemic but also a year of rediscovery, and reaquaintance and reopening; there are signs that things are moving to a point where people feel more able to engage once more, but the rebuilding will be a slow and steady journey not a mad dash. I hope that we will continue to make progress, renewing friendships and developing new ones, beginning afresh the support we have offered in the past and finding new and better ways of operating as well. The journey continues and we look forward to meeting and joining others as we travel along our way. Trustees at PXI Projects have used the period of lockdowns and closures to further consider what we do and how we work as a charity, focussing once again on our core aims of promoting better social inclusion, and our values of love, hope, and grace. Our new approach to offering a community food hub through our partnerships with both Foodworks and Fareshare, have taken so much of the pressure off the need to find food each week to put on our shelves; there is no shortage of food as we have seen as still there is so much overproduction and waste within the food industry as a whole that there is plenty to share with our community. In turn this new way of offering food has freed up time again for new projects and activities (as circumstances allow) and for the resumption of the important face to face support, love and friendship that we try to offer. This phase of the pandemic has also given us chance to focus on what we offer on our community allotments at Herries Road. The outdoor nature of this work meant that we could run activities even when it was still not possible indoors. We were even able to keep up with our annual Carols on the Allotments and this year were joined by Steel City Choristers (ex Sheffield Cathedral). It’s been a delight to see new groups of people using the allotments and finding a space there; from youth groups, womens’ groups, and adult mental health groups we’ve been pleased to welcome new friends and partners. Our new partnership with Brightbox Makerspace has been particularly important to us on the site and has added new ideas and greater diversity to the work there as well as greatly improving parts of the site with new infrastructure like new raised beds, a pizza oven and outdoor kitchen and a brand new shed. Later in 2021 we expect this link to provide further opportunities and we’re already working on helping shape a signage project and further groundwork involving young people. I cannot end this report without saying a huge thank you to Charlotte Killeya who stepped down as a Trustee this year, her energy and commitment have without doubt left a gap both in practical and emotional ways, our thoughts and prayers are with her on her continuing journey. Nick Waterfield (Chair of Trustees) ## **Community Food Hub & Social Café** As agreed by Trustee right at the start of the pandemic, we remained a delivery partner with S6 Foodbank at St Pauls right up until the end of 2020, ensuring the successful transfer of the foodbank after 10 years of delivery at Tabor, and paving the way for our new Community Food Hub and Social Cafe. As Trustees we spent considerable time debating whether or not we should return to a foodbank provision at Tabor after the periods of lockdown, our decision to do “do food differently” was based on a number of conclusions: First, we recognised that a foodbank is rarely about hunger per se, it is about subsidising inadequate incomes through food. Second, we had already recognised that the whole idea of “referrals” whether by agency or self was to one degree or another a demeaning and undignified way of offering support. It was in effect used merely as a clumsy mean of rationing limited resource, or to justify to donors about who gets food and if the truly “need” or “deserve” it. We concluded that there were more dignified ways of offering food based support that still allowed us to subsidise low income by supplementing and extending existing food budgets, but also ways that offered open access and choice. Our partnership with Foodworks, providing frozen meals, began in November and operated throughout the period of the second national lockdown. As well as the meals paid for by donations, we’ve also been able to offer free meals for children throughout school holiday periods. It wasn’t until May 2021 that we felt able to open up our Social Cafe at Tabor again; its return marked a significant step towards what felt “normal” and very returned the heartbeat of the community that is at the centre of the work we do. During May we also started to take deliveries from Fareshare again to stock our new community food stall. The food stall opens weekly and offers a number of items to people for a minimum donation. We know already have heard from people how much the ability to choose items has meant to them offering a level of dignity, choice and agency, unlike the foodbank model with pre packed bags and referral systems. The fact that the food stall is now financially self supporting and easily pays for the weekly delivery from Fareshare, is further evidence of the success of the shift away from foodbank. As such it feels the decision made by Trustees to move away from foodbank to this more sustainable model has already been justified. ## **Community Allotments & Growing Spaces** Since our start back on the community allotments in September 2020, we’ve spent time improving the site and working with a range of new partners, including Brightbox Makerspace, and thanks in part to that partnership we now we have a new shelter on Plot 74, new pizza oven and outdoor kitchen on 75 and new shed on 76, and are looking forward to a series of new monthly activities with young people including a new signage project for the site. ## **Tuesdays at Tabor** Tabor opened its doors once more in October 2020, but still only for limited periods and activities and delayed slightly due to Sheffield being placed on a Red Alert and at risk of local lockdown. Our Social Cafe only resumed in May 2021, at first we were only able to operate a much restricted service with the rule of six still operating inside the building. Thankfully the weather was kind to us and we were also able to expand the social cafe outdoors until such time as the restrictions were relaxed further. Since then we have seen the return of more and more familiar faces both as volunteers as well as to share in the social and support activities. The music group also started again in May and has added new members since its return. Whilst we were still unable to meet in person we tried to remain in contact and support some of our local families through the provision of craft and activity bags, which we gave out at school holiday times., in total we have supplied over 150 of these bags to different families this year ## **Reasons To Sing!** A new project this year has been a partnership collaboration with Steel City Choristers, who we first met on the allotments at our 2020 Carols on the Allotment. Together we’ve been collecting and documenting stories about peoples favourite songs; a film featuring these conversations and the songs is being created and hopefully next May (2022) we will be holding a celebration community concert featuring the stories, the songs and a community choir specially formed for the occasion. It’s been a great project to help us emerge from the deepest part of the pandemic and to reflect collectively about the power and importance of song in our lives. ## **Autism Hope** The last 12 months has been an important time for the group and it’s members and we found the need to connect and support each other more important than ever. In order for the meetings to still continue during lockdown we started our coffee mornings virtually via zoom and this was a great success, not only did we hold weekly coffee mornings we also had an online Zumba session and a Lockdown Lifeboat group session which we had some amazing feedback from. We were very lucky to have the easter craft packs and summer craft packs given to our members for their children and these went down a storm! We held a summer picnic when we could finally meet again in person and that was wonderful. Since September we have been hosting weekly coffee mornings and these have proven to be as popular than ever before with members averaging at 18 per session and we have had guest speakers from SNIPS and we are welcoming SSendias and Sheffield Parent Carer Forum in November. We received funding from Healthwatch Sheffield to produce a report for them of parental views of the healthcare service in Sheffield. We had a great response from our parents and the report has now been completed and is due to be launched by Healthwatch soon. ## **Appendix:** ## **Trustees 2020-21** Nick Waterfield (Chairperson) Alison Charlesworth (Treasurer) Carlie Brough Jonathan Buckley Teresa Buckley Iain Cloke Charlotte Killeya (Resigned February 2021) Cheryl Hattersley (Joined June 2021) Janet Shepherd Carlton Reeve (non voting members) Alan Bettison Jane Offord CHARITY COMMISSION FOR ENGLAND AND WALES Receipts and payments accounts CC16a Ftsrthe poriod To 1st em￿r202 31stAugu5t 2021 Section A Receipts and payments EndoMnent fund5 Total funds Lastyear toth• n••rest£ near*6t£ A1 Receipts grallls Charitab￿A￿1}hIe5 0￿ertr￿￿rwj InrAyne 21310 25,560 13.61 45 orA 11917 21310 39.215 A2 A#set an table). Investment sa A3Pa ments Costs ofchar11a￿e Raisiw funds 1.138 IB.613 t9,f51 17.221 192 5.186 Sub totsl 14649 24.973 21S10 A4 Asset and investment Y￿haSe¥ see table Sub total 6.324 18,649 24,973 22,510 Net of recwpts1fpa￿Thents) A5 Tran¥fers between fw A6 Cash funds last year end Cash fvnds this yeareml 92 1663 16.70 47 39,110 16.70 CCYX Rl aitounts ISSI 25109r2021 Section B Statement of assets and liabilities at the end of the period Unrestricted funds Restricted funds Endowment lunds neare5tÈ C2tegories B1 Cash funds 3A76 Total Cash funds 35,734 3.376 0￿3)} Endowment funds funds ¢•roste Details FLK¥Jbank 5tc