From its roots as a soup kitchen and winter shelter to a charity offering services all year round, the York Road Project tackles homelessness in Woking. Jennie Buzaglo finds out more:

THE York Road Project is a charity working with people at risk of homelessness or who are homeless in Woking. Having grown over the years, it is grateful for community support that enables it to help others.

“Without the local community, I really don’t know what we’d do,” said Cherisse Dealtry, chief operating officer, as she thanked residents for their ongoing support of the charity.

It started as a soup kitchen run by volunteers from churches in the area before officially becoming a registered charity in 2001. It’s grown in terms of services it provides in that time, as well as local awareness.

Councillor Will Forster announced it as his mayoral charity when he wore the chain of office in 2018-19, even spending a night on the streets of Woking as part of the charity’s sleep-out fundraiser.

The charity provides accommodation for anyone experiencing homelessness, as well as support in the form of day services, along with an outreach team and wellbeing project to aid rough sleepers and people with complex needs.

Anyone who would like to donate to the charity but isn’t sure exactly what might be needed can look at YRP’s wish list on the Amazon website. It gets updated regularly, depending on what is most required. “During Christmas we ran out of shampoo so we put it on the Amazon wish list, and just before Christmas I think we received 12 big bottles sent to us that we wanted,” said Cherisse.

She revealed that Twitter has also benefited the charity hugely as they often tweet when they need something and the online community will respond immediately.

“We tweet about how much we want to thank the community and we mean it so much,” she said. “People are phenomenal, it’s brilliant and we really can’t thank them enough.”

For the full story get the 16 January edition of the News & Mail