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BARFORD VILLAGE SHOP
LATEST NEWS :
Good Progress
This month has been spent in a flurry of small decision making. Lighting, paint colours, flooring; cash till systems and security are all under discussion. Amanda is firming up on our initial stock order and finalising the shelving layouts. We visited another community shop in Blockley – well worth a look if you are near to Chipping Campden. We are getting close to being ready to open. The building should be complete by the end of July.
Except…
We still need another £35,000 to fit out and stock the shop. We have raised enough money to pay for the building, but cannot commit to ordering stock and IT equipment or to employing a manager, without having money to pay the bills behind us. If we had the funds we could open in September, without them we might be talking about November or after Christmas.
Why do we have a funding gap?
Getting grants to fund a Village shop in a “non-deprived” area has proved to be very difficult. Many funding bodies will not support a shop – others only consider areas of economic deprivation or with large ethnic minority populations. We had hoped to raise more money from grants, but sadly many of our recent applications have been unsuccessful.
Over to you
Your small committee is struggling to keep up with everything that needs doing at present, and really needs your help in getting this extra money. There are some village fund-raising events planned in July and August – a stall at the school fete on 5th July, a Pig Roast on August 2nd and a concert on August 5th. Please support these as they will produce valuable funds and ‘every little helps’, but if anyone has ways or ideas to help us raise those extra thousands so the shop can open soon please get in touch.
Future events include Grand Auction of Promises on Saturday 18th October at the Memorial Hall. Please contact Philippa Wilson on 624779 if you can help.
Many villagers have volunteered to help staff the shop when it is opened and we will be holding some planning and training sessions for them over the summer – watch this space. If you haven’t volunteered yet but would like to please contact Kirsty on 624445 with your details.
We marked the start of the build with a ‘sod-cutting’ event on Saturday 1st March carried out by James Plaskitt MP. Click here for photo gallery.
Contact Kirsty Healey 624445, Mary Peirson 624145 or Rod Scott 624434
A big "Thank-You" to everyone who has helped us, to all our shareholders and specially to the JPC for their support.
For more information, click here to visit our website.
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