Architect’s firm donates much-needed furniture to brilliant Buckinghamshire charities working with vulnerable residents

The Wycombe Refugee Partnership is a charity supporting refugees in the Buckinghamshire area, showing care and love to these vulnerable families. The Princes Centre charity is an award-winning centre in Buckinghamshire supporting older people and people with disabilities, among others. Both charities were able to benefit from a generous donation of office furniture that was no longer needed by Knight Architects.

Showing that we care

 The Wycombe Refugee Partnership offers wraparound support to resettle refugee families in the High Wycombe area, in Buckinghamshire. This includes help with housing, education, language, befriending, welfare and job-seeking. Most important of all, the Wycombe Refugee Partnership is showing refugee families that there are people in their adopted country who care about them. Families have so far come from countries including Syria, Iran, Iraq, Egypt, Palestine, Sudan, Albania, Pakistan, Afghanistan and China.

The charity is also supporting families from Ukraine – these are people who have come to the UK on the government’s family visa scheme, but who receive no help from the government once they arrive in the country. The Wycombe Refugee Partnership works to help these people get into private rented accommodation, and to get settled.

When Trina, a volunteer with the charity, spotted the pedestals that were being offered via A Good Thing, she jumped at the opportunity:

“Some of the new Ukrainian arrivals had been keeping their valuables and documents in jiffy bags and envelopes – they just had nowhere safe to store them. I could see that these pedestals were lockable, which was perfect.”

Trina submitted her request for the furniture via A Good Thing, and received four pedestals, which she was delighted with:

“They went straight from my car to the four families. It was so easy. I collected them from Knight Architects, put them into the back of my car and drove them straight over to where the families were staying.”

Look at it, need it, request it, collect it!

This isn’t the first time Trina has engaged with A Good Thing, and she’s been wholly positive about the experience:

“Small things collectively can make a huge difference and can be so beneficial to the families we work with. It really gives them hope. You or I might just go out and buy a piece of furniture we needed, but some of these people just can’t. I love A Good Thing: you look at something online, decide you need it, request it, go and collect it, and get on with using it!”

You can see the love shining through

The Wycombe Refugee Partnership tells us that the families who received the pedestals were hugely appreciative:

“If it weren’t for A Good Thing, they just wouldn’t have had these things. It’s such a lovely service, and I just love the heart part of your logo – you can really see the love shining through!”

Tirelessly doing brilliant work in the community

The Princes Centre is an award-winning community-run daycare centre in Princes Risborough and Bourne End, Buckinghamshire. It supports older people and people with disabilities, among others. Kim Challinor, the centre manager, has been a keen user of A Good Thing for more than six months, and is a big fan:

“One of my trustees told me about A Good Thing and I took a look. It looked fantastic!”

Kim was delighted when she saw the offer of the pedestals come through:

“I saw they were lockable and was interested straightaway – we had one in our office, but it wouldn’t lock!”

Kim explained that many of the charity’s clients like to arrive for the day and lock their handbags away – so that they can relax and make the most of being in the centre. She told me that they have a real fear of losing their handbags, so that the pedestals have been absolutely brilliant.

“And we could never afford to buy these sorts of things”, Kim added.

How fantastic is that?

On the day we chat to each other, there has been office furniture and paint posted on the A Good Thing website – Kim has spotted this and is excited:

“All that office furniture – I’ve just seen it, it’s fantastic! We’re not in a position to request it at the moment, but I wish we could. And that paint! How fantastic is that? I look at the things on the site and think to myself ‘how brilliant, you’ve just saved us so much money if we get those items’. Your project is just amazing. I love getting those emails with the offers.”

The Princes Centre is all about providing adults with dignity and respect – the daycare centres are social hubs, places for people to socialise and try things they haven’t tried before. There are events like quizzes and bingo to get people together.

“As a charity we really appreciate the support you offer in marrying up business with charities to donate goods. This small token saves us money and I always look forward to looking if there is some way our small charity can benefit.”

The ideal solution

Meanwhile, Vicki at Knight Architects was so pleased to find a new home for some of the office furniture that needed to be moved out of the High Wycombe studio:

“A colleague came across your site a while ago, and we signed up in preparation for eventually closing our studio. We tried Facebook Marketplace first for these items, but had no luck there – and we knew we didn’t want to send the furniture to landfill. A Good Thing was the ideal solution. It was so simple. I would definitely do it again.”

Wishing they could have given more away

Vicki enjoyed using A Good Thing and found the process very straightforward:

“Following the match, the email that copied in the charity was very useful, allowing us to make contact with each other and sort out collection. It was a small extra effort to split the items across three different charities, but not too difficult.”

“I enjoyed meeting each of the charities as they came to collect the furniture, and that part was super smooth. The hardest part was lugging the pedestals out of the building, to be honest! The Wycombe Refugee Partnership told me that they would have taken more if I’d had it – I was gutted we didn’t have more to donate.”