Rye Community Shop celebrated its first round of grant-making as a registered charity on Friday September 9. Local MP Amber Rudd was there at 41 Cinque Ports Street as patron to hand out award cheques totalling £9300 to the various recipients.
Ore Community Association runs a community hub for older people, transporting them by minibus to Rye. Representative Mags Pawson said the award of £2000 will go towards maintaining the bus service and developing a new “Man Shed” project.
Rye and District Community Transport, represented by Pat Hughes, received a cheque for £2000 to help maintain a vital bus route and the Dial a Ride service.
Rye and District Street Pastors were out in force to witness their leader, Nizam Mohammed, receive a cheque for £2000. They were commended for their service to the night-time economy by offering significant help to the police in reducing anti-social behaviour, helping the vulnerable, drug addicts and drunks and keeping the streets safe. The award will be used for uniforms and for training more volunteers.
Camber After Schools Club provides safe play opportunities for four to 11 year olds, currently running a healthy eating club, helping children learn to prepare and cook nutritional meals. Samantha Birks collected £1000 towards running costs.
Samantha Birks also runs the FlipFlops Pre-School for two to five year olds at Camber, rated good by Ofsted. £700 was awarded towards new creative materials and technology equipment.
Rye Art Gallery is instituting a new art competition for local young people to submit examples of their creative work. Amber Rudd handed a cheque for £600 to Michael Miller, Chairman of the Rye Art Gallery, to cover the cost of the prizes.
Finally, by unanimous vote of the Community Shop volunteers, an award was made to the Rye Lifeboat Station following the recent drowning tragedy at Camber. Richard Tollett, RNLI crew member at Rye Harbour, collected a cheque for £1000.
Kate Sims, a trustee of the Community Shop, said later: “The new shop has proved to be very well supported by the local community for which we are so very grateful and wish to thank everyone who has supported the shop through donations, volunteering or just coming in and buying our stock. We would also very much welcome anyone who would like to spend a few hours helping out in the shop. It is great knowing that you can be part of something directly which helps to support the community and it’s a great way of welcoming visitors to Rye as well as catching up with locals! Apart from which we are so busy, we could do with an extra couple of pairs of hands with the customers”.
Photo: Kenneth Bird