Chopsticks is a community-benefit organisation with a difference. It is actually owned by its disabled service users.

As well as receiving day care, Chopsticks' owners also help run its local kindling wood and garden maintenance services. Adopting the social enterprise model, the profits are then reinvested back into the organisation to deliver yet more social returns.

The day care includes using machines in Chopsticks’ workshop to cut firewood from scrap timber, which is sold locally. They also tend gardens as part of Chopsticks’ garden maintenance business, which helps 75 elderly and disabled people to continue living in their own homes rather than moving into residential care.

For several years, Chopsticks operated from a 1950s workshop that was unfit for purpose -- it couldn’t accommodate wheelchair users and only had workspace for 15 people.

By September 2007, Chopsticks had bought and moved into a larger, more accessible building at Northallerton Business Park. The building will double Chopsticks’ working capacity and – hopes David – its average annual £30,000 surplus, which is put back into improving and creating more business.

“People with disabilities want to work just like other people,” says Chopsticks’ administrator David Stockport. “Many who attend our day care services have previously had no involvement with work and although they are not strictly employees here, they carry out work-based activities and feel that they are at work.”

The new building, which was partly acquired with a finance package put together by the ACF, includes modern, more efficient wood cutting machinery that will help Chopsticks to win more public sector contracts and become self-sustainable.

Chopsticks couldn’t have bought the building without a funding package from the ACF comprising a £196,680 loan and a £40,500 grant.

In August 2007, Chopsticks drew on the ACF finance to help make its final building payments. “The ACF’s money was totally crucial because it was the largest single funding we received,” says David. “If we hadn’t got it, the building wouldn’t be here.”

The ACF will also provide expertise to help Chopsticks to achieve its business targets and ultimately help more people with disabilities.

ENDS

CONTACT:-

http://www.chopsticksappeal.co.uk/