Hilltop Community Centre received £10,000 from our Springboard fund for a kitchen extension.
Wycombe Multicultural Organisation (WMCO), a community provider and registered charity, applied for the funding as they use the Hilltop Community Centre to promote education, social inclusion, health and wellbeing of residents.
They applied for funding to create an extended and upgraded community kitchen within the centre that will help deliver health, social and wellbeing activities or sessions that meet the current and emerging needs of the local community.
The project involved constructing a new extension and demolishing the old kitchen, with a refurbishment throughout and new appliances installed. The £10,000 funding from was part-funding of the larger project which commenced in April 2020 and was completed in November 2021.
WMCO said "The outcome of the project has exceeded our expectations. The space is now much larger, functional and welcoming which will help to serve the health, social and wellbeing needs of the local community. We're already experiencing more interest from local residents for hall bookings as the confidence grows with social gatherings within Covid-19 parameters. We have also had interest and are in dialogue with local food establishments about tailored cookery classes for young people and single parent families, to help with healthy meal choices."
(Image: The kitchen before renovations)
(Image: The kitchen after renovations)
"A few of the regular community groups such as Talkback, who provide support to people with learning disabilities and autism, have started to enjoy the beginning of cooking classes and the Saturday School have had a larger space to prepare the school lunches. The feedback from the service users has been extremely positive, and the transformation has been welcomed by many whom have visited the Centre since the completion."
Comment from Talkback, a regular user of the Hilltop facility:
“Talkback has been using Hilltop Community Centre since September 2017 to run a variety of sessions providing support for people with learning and physical disabilities and people with autism. We use the main hall to run inclusive sports sessions, the kitchen to teach cooking and life skills and the small hall to run social groups. The newly modernised and more spacious kitchen space will allow us to increase the frequently and the capacity of the group size in each cookery class, utilising much safer and more user-friendly facilities.”
