We are proud to be supporting a fantastic local charity in Enfield, Zebras Adults and Children’s Charity. £5 of every membership of The Businesses Community Enfield goes directly to the charity. We wanted to support a local organisation (because that’s what communities do) and Jamie and Harriet who started the charity have great vision and big plans… so we wanted to do all that we could to support them. Most of the fees for our events include a Zebras donation too, and it’s great to know that we help make a difference to people in our area who need a bit of extra support.
Rather than try and explain what they do, we asked Harriet to…
We are a Enfield based charity which has been inspired by our own experience, we are parent carers to our Autistic Son. We created the charity due to a realisation of a lack of recreational services for people who just want somewhere to go where they can be themselves, be accepted, and above have fun! The charities services are the place where people can do just that. We also launched this year a funding opportunity for individuals who may just want to do something in their own time and space – this is our “recreation fund”, which is relatively unique and is already proving to be successful in helping to fund people to do activities such as take a short break, learn to swim and day trips out.
We also help to alleviate the effects of poverty through various projects one of which being a amazing initiative launched last Christmas in partnership with Edmonton Salvation Army – “The Christmas collections”. Last Christmas we supported over 70 families living in destitution in Enfield, Tottenham and Edmonton by giving each of them large food parcels plus large gift bags full of brand new toys for their children. This service was deemed as a life line, we are aiming to do this every year.
Aside from this ourselves – the founders, personally made visits to children who have life limiting conditions in their own homes. We dressed as Mr and Mrs Santa Claus and again brought gifts for the children and all their siblings. This was a very humbling experience, which will be repeated again this year.
A further project which we run throughout the year is the Fareshare project in partnership with Tesco. Each week surplus food is collected by Jamie – The founder and distributed to local families in need.
At key times through the year we also run additional events for our beneficiaries in the form of Easter parties for the children, disco’s and Christmas events, plus a relaxed Santa visit – created especially for children who like our own son struggle to visit Santa in an ordinary setting due to their disabilities.
Aside from all the above the charity also provides information, advice and emotional support. We are a small charity run entirely by a team of dedicated volunteers and trustees.
We are also very happy to support other charities in the area too and offer free membership, as well as free slots in our publication, BizCom! This enables charities to gain more exposure by featuring their events on our events page, their profile and news, all of which gets shared via our various social media platforms and via our members – result!
We are always looking for new ideas of ways to support and raise more money for Zebras – if you have any ideas then just email us at enfield@thebusinessescommunity.com