Compendium Living supports Derby community with donation to local Methodist Church
Leading regeneration specialist Compendium Living has donated a whole set of kitchen units to a community house called Susanna Wesley House, situated in its popular Castleward development in Derby, for use in Mansfield Street Methodist Church.
The donation will help develop a social enterprise that was set up as a Church project, called Sacred Bean Coffee, which teaches people affected by homelessness, addiction and criminality how to source, roast and brew coffee, offering training and employment opportunities for people with significant barriers to work.
So far, the kitchen units have been utilised to renovate the coffee roasting room at Mansfield Street Methodist Church in Chester Green; an old, derelict building acquired by Sacred Bean Coffee as a place for them to develop their project, set up with a large, state-of-the-art coffee roastery and adjacent to an artisan community café and centre.
Wendy Lister, Project Manager at Compendium Living, said: “We’re thrilled to have made this donation. The pandemic has been uniquely challenging for community projects like Sacred Bean Coffee and the vulnerable people they support, and we’re very proud to be able to make this contribution to improve their facilities and help strengthen the valuable work they do.”
Reverend Darren Howie is the Founding Director of Sacred Bean Coffee, and came up with the idea as a reformed offender and ex-addict himself who’s first job following prison and rehab was working in a coffee shop.
Reverend Darren, who’s also a Castleward resident, said: “Those the project supports will now have the right working environment and high specification workspaces, surfaces and storage units in their new roastery, which we’re hoping to move into by the end of March. We’re also looking forward to training more people in the Church’s kitchen once the renovation has been completed and restrictions allow.
“The pandemic has meant that we’ve had to terminate all of our training programmes. This was devastating for those we were teaching, as they lost a lot of their support network and it has put many of them at risk of relapse. Fortunately, we’ve been able to employ two of the men we first trained and they have been running Sacred Bean Coffee as a small business for us. As a small Church-run social enterprise, we have lost more than 60% of our income through Coronavirus and help like this goes a long way.”
Works will soon be underway to turn the Church into a community café. Alongside the kitchen, they are also renovating the community hall which will be available for a range of community groups to use.
Castleward is open by appointment only, Thursday to Monday from 10am to 5pm. For further information and to book your appointment, call 01332 907 995 or visit https://www.castleward.co.uk/.
For more information on Sacred Bean Coffee, visit https://www.sacredbeancoffee.co.uk/.
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