Birmingham Swop Shop, Shop!
Donation protected
Birmingham (Rubery) Swop Shop has provided free preloved school uniform to 100s of families, across Birmingham and beyond! In the previous 3 months (July to September 2019) they have provided for over 580 children. This includes referrals from Birmingham Children’s Trust, Barnardo’s and school professionals.
Currently, they work with 30+ schools who have donated their lost property and support the Swop Shop to make uniform accessible to everyone who needs it (for whatever reason). The local community have generously donated their old uniforms, time and support to enable the organisation to grow and provide for more families, whilst also reducing clothing going to landfill. At this time the schools involved are predominately in South Birmingham and North Bromsgrove - although this hasn’t prevented support being provided to places as far as Telford and Wolverhampton!
Since coming into existence, the Swop Shop has been funded and run from the founder’s home - given the success, the uniform has reached the point where it has taken over every room in the house, meaning that the family can no longer function and can not expand their work to encompass schools further North.
The founder has also left their job to ensure that they can provide the much needed service and expand it so that more families can access their child’s school uniform.
In order to ensure that the Swop Shop is able to continue to grow and extend its support across all of Birmingham, they need to secure a suitable premises (with lots of storage!) to run the service from. It is no longer viable to run this from a family home, and ultimately having a location makes it much more accessible and normalised for many families.
Unfortunately, despite Birmingham City Council having many empty shops, in commercially undesirable areas that would be perfectly suited for the Swop Shop - they have decided to leave them empty and to deteriorate rather than support this much needed service.
So it is now that, after exploring a number of other possible avenues, the Swop Shop turns to the community of Birmingham and beyond for support.
Setting a highly optimistic target of £20k (which would allow us to secure premises for 2 years), we hope that we will make enough to at least raise enough for a one year period....
Coatathon Event News Report
Birmingham Mail Article
Podcast link
Facebook page @ruberyswopshop
twitter: Shop_swop
www.ruberyswopshop.co.uk
Currently, they work with 30+ schools who have donated their lost property and support the Swop Shop to make uniform accessible to everyone who needs it (for whatever reason). The local community have generously donated their old uniforms, time and support to enable the organisation to grow and provide for more families, whilst also reducing clothing going to landfill. At this time the schools involved are predominately in South Birmingham and North Bromsgrove - although this hasn’t prevented support being provided to places as far as Telford and Wolverhampton!
Since coming into existence, the Swop Shop has been funded and run from the founder’s home - given the success, the uniform has reached the point where it has taken over every room in the house, meaning that the family can no longer function and can not expand their work to encompass schools further North.
The founder has also left their job to ensure that they can provide the much needed service and expand it so that more families can access their child’s school uniform.
In order to ensure that the Swop Shop is able to continue to grow and extend its support across all of Birmingham, they need to secure a suitable premises (with lots of storage!) to run the service from. It is no longer viable to run this from a family home, and ultimately having a location makes it much more accessible and normalised for many families.
Unfortunately, despite Birmingham City Council having many empty shops, in commercially undesirable areas that would be perfectly suited for the Swop Shop - they have decided to leave them empty and to deteriorate rather than support this much needed service.
So it is now that, after exploring a number of other possible avenues, the Swop Shop turns to the community of Birmingham and beyond for support.
Setting a highly optimistic target of £20k (which would allow us to secure premises for 2 years), we hope that we will make enough to at least raise enough for a one year period....
Coatathon Event News Report
Birmingham Mail Article
Podcast link
Facebook page @ruberyswopshop
twitter: Shop_swop
www.ruberyswopshop.co.uk
Organizer
Kristina Murphy
Organizer
England
