#canopyofcare |

The Prospects Trust Unwrapped Canopy of Care project is going to create “more than just a place to sit” for the community of Ely & East Cambridgeshire. We wish to install a commercial grade canopy across our outside fully accessible seating area outside of Unwrapped, LuvEly’s Community Larder and Lighthouse Community Centre to enable our Co-workers, Customers and Community Groups to have a safe place to interact (at a distance). Our Canopy of Care will be a physical hug of a cover to those suffering isolation during Covid. We wish to create a well-managed safe place in the heart of Ely where people can still meet in the winter, outside and supported. Pre and during Covid-19 many Community support groups have used Unwrapped as a meeting point. The Canopy of Care will cover our outside well-spaced seating to enable this vital human interaction to continue and make sure that everyone has someone to care for and be cared by.

In Sept 2019 our local and very established charity opened a very new and innovative social enterprise – Unwrapped, Ely’s first Zero Waste, Eco-Refill Larder & truly GREEN-grocery. A year of trading and Unwrapped has put social enterprise on the Ely high street, with young people with additional needs at the heart of action, making the barista pro coffee, serving customers on state of the art tills and creating fantastic products from the shop and farm produce. But imagine running a zero single use plastic refill store & farm food café in the middle of a Global Pandemic, its been interesting. However what we learnt – we can survive this together.

Over lockdown we reduced the internal head count, created hand sanitiser stations, provided free home delivery to our shielding customers and sadly removed our internal seating to make room for “social distancing”. Our staff and Co-worker Teams were the first to wear face coverings in the City, making Covid precautions a new norm, vital as we support some of the most vulnerable in our society. This summer we created a whole new outside seating area from donations, crowdfunding and lots of upcycling creativity. Our customers flocked to support our (their) enterprise; shopping local, seasonally, sustainably and supporting Unwrapped as we dare to retail differently. They even helped create the planters outside our seating area, help lay foundations and erect the benches, tables and give back their time and expertise to make it happen. All this was tricky while the sun shined – now Winter is indeed coming and we wish to create a little Canopy of Care to keep that warmth in all of our hearts.

Donate a tenner and kick off our Crowdstarter, donate £20 to be our Crowdpleaser and if you can £50 to be our Chief Crowdonor! Keep it local, keep safe and keep happy at Prospects Trust Unwrapped – retailing differently since before Covid-19 and unwrapping more than just a place to sit!

Thank you to all of our supporters to date – we have already raised a third of our appeal total – lets make Lockdown worth something and have something to look forward to when we can meet up again!