Volunteers band together to give Winchester community space a facelift

Dozens of people came along to help renovate and give a facelift to Unit 12, on Winnall Valley Road, on Sunday, March 3.

This included volunteers from the different services that use the space, including Winchester Community Pantry, Winnall Rock School, and Street Reach.

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Lara Tarrant, manager of the Community Food Pantry, said: “Everyone is doing stuff outside of what they normally do, and are giving up a Sunday to do it.

Unit 12 (Image: Chris Atkinson)

“There are so many groups up here, and although we are all community orientated, we don’t necessarily work together or even cross paths, so it’s nice for us because you can meet the people around you.

“So, you get to meet other people and find out what they can do.”

The volunteers have done a range of jobs, including getting rid of an old coffee machine, repainting parts of the building, cleaning and trimming branches on a bush on the site.

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Caroline Kirkman, one of the volunteers, told the Chronicle: “What has been really nice is the number of volunteers we have had. One of our volunteers is the partner of one of the renters, and he’s come here and he’s going to help us get our water machine working, which is great.

“Everyone is doing what they can, some people are dropping in and out, and even if it’s just an hour it is still an hour of things being done. If we add up all that time, we reckon it’s about 50 hours or so of people being here and helping. And we wouldn’t be able to pay people to come in for 50 hours as a non-profit. It’s a lot of man power.

“We would like to thank all the volunteers who helped today, as well as Wickes Winchester for donating supplies for us to use.”