As part of SPAR’s 2024 Community Cashback grant scheme, Contact Hostel were awarded £10,000 to support the amazing work they do to help their local community.
Contact Hostel provides support and accommodation to homeless teenage girls and young women from in and around the Manchester area. They support their residents to return to education, find employment or gain training, so that when they leave they are able to contribute to society as mature and responsible individuals.
Contact Hostel's £10,000 grant will be spent on running costs for the hostels, including staff salaries. Contact pride themselves on being the only charity providing accommodation and support to teenage girls, in a female only environment, in Greater Manchester. The hostel is staffed 24 hours per day by a team of support workers, the costs associated with staffing is their biggest expenditure and essential to the service they provide.
Philippa Harrington, Marketing Manager at James Hall & Co. Ltd, said: “We have chosen Contact Hostel as our grand prize winner in 2024 as it has an amazing legacy of impact over 50 years and continues to deliver outstanding work today. It is also an opportunity for us a business to support the ongoing issue of tackling homelessness, and we are delighted that £10,000 is going to a fantastic place that will benefit the lives of young women.”
Helen Gazard, Fundraising and Income Partner at Contact Hostel said:
Since opening in 1970, Contact Hostel has provided a safe home and support to over 1000 girls, allowing them to live happier, healthier and more positive lives.
Contact hostel was set up by former nun Brigid Murphy in 1970. Previously working at a school for young offenders in Manchester, Brigid was concerned that too many pupils were leaving education with nowhere safe to call home. She realised that they were sometimes ending up on the streets or turning to drugs and alcohol to survive. She used government grants and her own resources to open Contact, and It has been running successfully and providing a safe shelter for young women from around Manchester ever since. Brigid died in 2005 but her great work and legacy live on at Contact.
Find out more about Contact hostel: https://www.contacthostel.co.uk/
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