An organisation dedicated to supporting adults with special educational needs in Bishop’s Stortford faces closure amid a cash crisis.
Staff and volunteers fear Wiggly Willow coffee shop in Hockerill Street, which has four staff, could shut its doors within weeks unless it can find and fund a new manager.
Trevor Bennett, who is 74, has been battling to keep the not-for-profit community interest company (CIC) afloat since founder Sid Perry walked away from the project, resigning as a director in August 2021.
She launched the café, which provides training opportunities and a safe space for around 50 people with disabilities, in March 2018.
Trevor said: “My health is deteriorating and I cannot continue to run Wiggly Willow – I just cannot put in the time and effort that’s required.”
For the past three months, he has been trying to secure a grant so the CIC can recruit a new manager and ring-fence £35,000 for a year’s salary.
Before Sid’s departure, she committed Wiggly Willow to expand its skills and social provision at a “clubhouse” in new premises across the street.
Trevor said that when she left she withdrew her personal financial backing: “We still have the place, but we’re going to have to let that go.”
He was an experienced businessman before retirement and believed the café was still a going concern capable of continuing to serve customers and support users, and he was determined to secure charity status.
“There’s no question it can be saved and I’ve even got some people in mind to talk to about being the manager, but they need to be paid and I don’ot have the budget,” he said. “There’s no doubt in my mind if we had that lump sum of money which we could ring-fence it’s sustainable.”
But Wiggly Willow’s real value cannot be measured in monetary terms. He said: “We provide somewhere to go and somebody else to talk to in the same position.”
There have been some remarkable successes, with work experience leading to formal employment, but Trevor said Wiggly Willow’s strength was giving its users a sense of purpose.
He said: “One young lady who came to us was a selective mute, but now she answers the telephone.”
Former councillor Colin Woodward, who helped launch Wiggly Willow when he was town mayor, pledged to do everything he could to save the project.
As chairman of Satellite Rotary, he will be appealing to fellow members and the town’s other Rotarians, as well as the student Interact clubs at Hockerill Anglo-European College, Herts and Essex High School and The Bishop’s Stortford High School, to see if they will take on fundraising from September.
In the meantime, he has asked community support fund administrators to consider helping.
Richard Smith, a trustee of Grove Cottage, the home of Mencap in Bishop’s Stortford, said: “We are fully supportive of any organisation that provides much-needed services and opportunities for people with a learning disability locally.
“We maintain a regular dialogue with Wiggly Willow to ensure that our services and activities are complementary, especially given the number of people who use us both.”
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