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BGL Group donates £6,000 to local homeless shelter

Major local employer supports St Theresa's with donation towards Day Care Centre

Immediate release: 25 March 2010

Local employer, the BGL Group, has donated £6,000 to St Theresa's Day Centre in Peterborough, as part of its commitment to the local community.

Julie Ainley, of the BGL Group Central Community Team, handed over the cheque to Doug Styles, Manager at the centre which is based in Manor House Street, Peterborough.

Through its Corporate Social Responsibility policy, BGL is committed to supporting local good causes and with sites in Sunderland and Coventry as well as Peterborough, is able to significantly help a number of charities and organisations across the country each year.

St Theresa's is a unique day centre. It is the only one in Peterborough, supporting the homeless and disadvantaged people of the city by providing basic comforts and an extensive array of crucial services. It opened almost 20 years ago and now has 700 registered clients, servicing around 100 of those people everyday. Clients are over the age of 18 and either homeless or claiming social benefit. They can access the centre during morning opening hours and are provided with hot meals, health and fitness activities, accommodation and benefits advice.

One of the city-based charity's many aims is to help clients boost their confidence and self esteem in order to improve their current situation. It also gives out around 350 emergency food parcels each year, to those in such dire situations that they have no funds to purchase food.

BGL's donation will help towards the provision of these emergency food parcels and will also enable St Theresa's to continue its structured activity programme this year. The programme sees the centre open during the afternoons for activities aimed at getting people back to health and back into the workplace. For example, the charity employs an IT trainer who runs sessions on basic IT skills and how to produce a CV on the computer.

Jeremy Moll, who heads up BGL's Central Community Team, said: "We are committed to providing financial help and volunteer support in areas close to our offices. St Theresa's is a vital resource for the city – it can literally mean life or death for the people it looks after. We are glad to be able to offer our backing for this very worthwhile cause. Anything that helps the homeless to make those first moves to getting back on their feet is definitely a step in the right direction."

Doug Styles, Centre Manager at St Theresa's said: "This is an incredible boost for us. It has come at a really good time too. We had some funding for these structured activities and it was about to run out. It means we can continue the programme we are already working on for another few months at least. We need constant support for our individual projects – without it they would have to come to an end. We try to give people a sense of direction with free benefits advice, accommodation advice and healthy lifestyle programmes and these structured activities are a great way of helping to improve their employability for the future."