From l to r, Chris Lynes, Lesley Bill, Stuart Tennant, Steve Stanley, Chris Frost, Maxine Kidd, Angie Taylor,
She Ash & Joseph Dowthwaite. (All except Stuart and Steve being members of the Committee

Stuart Tennant, District Charity Steward for Tameside Freemasons (Ashton & Mossley District) attended a Committee Meeting at Mossley Community Association on Roughtown Road, Mossley last Wednesday, in order to hand over a Cheque for £500 from the East Lancashire Masonic Charity. He was responding to a request for financial assistance from Christine Frost, the Secretary of the Community Association. Stuart sought assistance from the Grant Making Committee of the ELMC, who had been pleased to make this grant to such a worthy cause. Steve Stanley, another local Freemason, came along to see the work that the Community Association was doing. Steve said, “It’s always wonderful to get out and see the work being done in our local Community. I sincerely hope that this grant will enable the Community Association to make progress towards their goal.”
In their application, Christine said, “We opened up our community café in July 2018, with the aim of reducing isolation, increasing social eating, improving mental health and wellbeing, creating volunteering opportunities, redistributing excess food and engaging with a wider part of our community. To facilitate this a group of volunteers cleared, cleaned and painted the annex area, installed adult toilets, and scoured the charity shops for tableware and table linen. The café opened its doors on 3^rd July and has been a popular community attraction since then, with families, individuals and small groups coming along to meet and interact.
however the room we wanted to use is not really up to the standard needed to operate in the long term, the annex area of our building was previously used, for more than 40 years, as a nursery / playgroup, and before that a well loved local Primary School.
We have discussed what we want to achieve with our Committee, Users and other supporters and have come up with the following two stage plan.
In Stage 1 we would like to replace or install the following major items:

1. Floor covering will cost up to £2,000
2. Decoration will cost about £1500
3. A New fire door in the region of £2500
4. A New boiler could cost up to £8000
5. Water boiler / toaster and soup urn £1000
6. 6 New tables £480

Then in Stage 2 we would continue by dealing with the following:

1. Dropping the ceiling would cost about £1000 if it was fitted by volunteers or £2000 installed by an outside company.
2. Toilet cubicles / sinks, tiling, towel dispenser, baby changer £2500 approx

We have received the following comments from our users. An 81 year old user said, “it is so friendly and welcoming, who would have thought that at my age I would be making new friends”. A single man in his 60`s said, “It’s great, I love coming every week. It’s nice to have a chat.” Another lady said “Since my husband passed away, it has made me get out and be with people”
We are determined to extend the café and its facilities to meet the need of our community, we are offering volunteer drivers to help people who find accessing the centre difficult and plan to address holiday hunger once we have the correct storage and kitchen facilities.
We hope that you will be able to support us in our project which will have a beneficial impact on people of all ages.”

©Copyright Chris Frost (with additions and amendments by Kevin Hall). Photograph Kevin Hall