These are some of the projects and plans we have in place at the moment. Please do get in touch if you would like to find out more. We’re always interested to hear your ideas too!
Touchpoint Café
Open Thursdays 11am-5pm and Fridays 11.30am-4pm, our community café has been really popular, and is a welcoming space for people to meet friends or make new ones. The first tea or coffee is free of charge, and the homemade cakes and hot food are very reasonably priced. Food is offered free to those who are experiencing financial hardship, because we want to make sure that everyone is able to spend time at the café. We often have visiting support services and community interest groups including Citizens Advice, the Peabody Trust and the Acehounds Friendship Dogs amongst others. We have a children’s clothes exchange and a book exchange, and visitors are welcome to help themselves to items and donate if they are able to. The TouchPoint Café aims to be a safe, welcoming place while also offering help to access a variety of support services.
Digital skills & confidence training
We’re launching our digital skills classes from Friday February 25th at 2pm. These will be run in partnership with West Essex Community Action Network and Mind in West Essex. Classes will run every Friday at the TouchPoint community building and will last around an hour. The classes are aimed at building confidence in using digital services. This includes sending emails, shopping online, form filling and fraud prevention. It’s open to people of all levels of experience, and you can bring your own device along if you would like, although we also have devices that we can lend people to use.
“Forget Me Not” at TouchPoint
Starting on Friday March 4th at 10.00am -12.00 noon we will host a weekly Dementia Café called Forget Me Not. This will be for people who are affected by dementia and their carers. The cafe will offer companionship, support and activities. Our friends from the Saffron Walden Dementia Café will run it for us.
Community Fridge project
We are delighted to have secured funding from Hubbub and Amazon to launch a community fridge. Our aim is to reduce food waste and to share within our community. The Co-op and Waitrose have agreed to support the fridge by supplying end of day produce, which is a wonderful boost. Local Stansted charity Human Roots will also work with us by growing vegetables that will be distributed via the fridge. We are actively seeking volunteers to help deliver and manage this exciting project.
Bereavement Café
In partnership with St Clare Hospice we run a monthly Bereavement Café. It’s held on the first Wednesday of every month at the TouchPoint café/day centre from 10.00am-11.30am. The cafe’s aim is to connect local people so they can support each other throughout their grief. Everyone is welcome to access this free, community led service, however recent their bereavement.
Let us know what you think!
As you can see, there is lots going on! If you are interested in any of the above, or have some ideas for what we should be doing next, please get in touch, we would love to hear from you.