The Long Game

Do you want to join me in making a difference? I'm raising money in aid of CORNERSTONE SUPPORTED HOUSING AND COUNSELLING LTD and every donation will help. Thank you in advance for your contribution to this cause that means so much to me.

The Fundraising Team are Henry Dawson, Josh Conlon, Sam Ward-Hardy and Tom Makepeace along with regular games night players Brendan Hoar, James Lane, James Shepherd and many others. 

We have all been friends for years, and almost every Friday for the last 3+ years and have been meeting up at each others houses for a regular weekly games night to play board games. When Coronavirus hit the UK in March something which had kept us all close as friends, even through university, became more important than ever.  With new rules about social gatherings and lockdown we moved games night online using Zoom to communicate and found loads of online games that enabled to keep our weekly social going strong.

Over the last few months games night has gone from strength to strength with epic meet-ups online often lasting until 5am in the morning which led us to developing the idea to share our love of games with others, via a 24-hour livestream whilst raising money for a good cause to help homeless people. 

We have chosen to support Cornerstone Supported Housing and Counselling, a local charity who work with some of the most vulnerable individuals in our society, giving those who access their services a place of sanctuary, a sense of worth and support to turn their lives around.

Cornerstone Supported Housing and Counselling is an independent homelessness charity that runs a joinery workshop and furniture business based in County Durham which is run by those people for whom the charity benefits. 

The charity also provides homes, a charity shop ‘Charityshop4U’ in Willington and a shop/community hub ‘The Cracket’ in Hartlepool. 

The charity gives every effort to achieving self-sustainability and uses these values to provide an example to the people it serves in their own lives. 

The charity supports and houses homeless male and females and also young people who are struggling to connect with the mainstream school system.

Cornerstone set up a Rough Sleeper Assertive Outreach project in Hartlepool last year which links also with the same service in County Durham.  The Rough sleeper project heavily supported and operated by volunteers of the Cracket’s drop-in project. The project offers rough sleepers, residents of our supported housing and the local community advice and help on, gaining safe appropriate housing, benefit claims, domestic violence issues and drug and alcohol rehabilitation. Its impact on rough sleeping is huge with dozens housed for the first time in decades and two in paid work within 12 months.

The charity places great importance on our furniture venture’s proactive work with school pupils who are not coping in a traditional classroom environment. We do this because our research found that 95% of the adults joining our emergency homelessness services said that their social isolation began when not thriving within a school.

The alternative education provision for young people is now considered as one of the most innovative and sought-after in the North East. 

Charityshop4U was set up in 2016 and is run entirely by volunteers from the community of Greater Willington from Cornertone’s old offices in Willington’s High Street. Its purpose is to provide grants to children and young people where they need to overcome a financial barrier to achieving positive outcomes or themselves. It has so far given out more than £6000 to that end.