Help keep Merewent Cheshire Home’s fires burning
The past year has seen staff dig deep into the home's reserves in efforts to keep the home running.
THE Merewent Cheshire Home continues to work consistently towards providing the best possible service to its residents who rely completely on staff’s commitment and care, despite financial strains.
The past year has seen staff dig deep into the home’s reserves in efforts to keep the home running. “Donations have dwindled considerably and securing funding has remained a persistent challenge for us. We’re looking at a lot of cost cutting wherever we can. At the moment we’re trying to view options in terms of our electricity, either switching to solar or partial solar power so it will drop our ongoing electricity costs going forward,” said the home’s chairperson Raven Naidoo.
Covid-19 has also brought an added stress to the finances and functioning of the home. Their planned events for the year were all cancelled. “Normal relations with the community who come to visit the home or drop off donations such as groceries were also affected. We have had to spend a lot of money on PPE, sanitisers as well as cleaning materials. This has become an added daily expense that we had never anticipated. The challenges are many but we don’t compromise the service in any way,” said Naidoo.
Never ones to let the ship sink, an ever dedicated team of staff have put their heads and hands together to put together a number of fundraising initiatives and drives to sustain the worthy organisation. The wonderbag drive has been doing especially well and attracted a lot of positive support from the community. The initiative was born from a partnership with fellow NPO, Community Chest, who reached out to the home to assist in their energy saving project as well as help them raise funds.
“We thank Community Chest and the community for their support. Without such generosity, we cannot continue to do the work that we do,” said Merewent Cheshire Home manager, Sharita Bundhu who has been with the organisation for 26 years.
A wonderbag is a simple but revolutionary non-electric slow cooker developed for cooking over open fires. After bringing a pot of food to the boil and placing it in a foam-insulated Wonderbag, the food will continue cooking for up to 12 hours without additional heat. Because the pot spends a fraction of time on the fire or stove, wonderbag cooking reduces by 70% the amount of wood, charcoal, and other polluting fuels used in the home. This saves hours of time and labor, and improves indoor air quality and overall health.
The home, which currently house 35 residents and strives to work in partnership with people with disabilities to provide residential accommodation and services that promote independent living. Merewent Cheshire Home also aims to initiate projects that address social and economic inequalities, thereby alleviating poverty and facilitating the social integration of people with disabilities into mainstream society.
Over and above funding, the home appeals to members of the community to assist with non-perishable groceries, their bread account or even volunteering their services such as plumbing, electrical expertise, painting, grass cutting etc. “We would also appreciate potential donors to consider funding a caregiver at the home, which would help tremendously, as salaries is our biggest expense. We don’t want to dry out anyone’s pocket, but at least consider helping with something to keep our fires burning everyday. We can’t afford to close down, our residents rely on us and they wouldn’t know where to go. Any and every contribution helps,” said Sharita.
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