Helping Hand has a partnership with the Access Department of Blackpool and the Fylde College - whose learners are collecting all sorts of waste paper from around their buildings. Helping Hand and the College has created a 'work placement' for two groups of learners based on this collection.
The educational aspects of this work include working with numbers, literacy and working as a team.
Helping Hand then extends the team and we collect every week the sorted waste paper from the college campus all over the Fylde coast..
We are hoping to extend the team further by working with another community group to recycle the paper and are busy in discussions on this.
We are known as "Aspire Paper", part of Helping Hand
Another new social entreprise in the making has been born out of the wonderful donations of clothes Helping Hand receives on a regular basis from all over the Fylde.
Clothes of all kinds are donated both to the Community Resource Centre and our Shop on Cookson Street; staff and volunteers sort through the clothes and we use as much as possible in the Clothes Store for our clients - see more under "Our Charity Shops".
We also sell some clothing in our second shop on Cookson Street, next to our furniture shop.
All clothes that are surplus then get sent away for textile recycling.
We are known as "Aspire Textiles", part of Helping Hand.