We’ve secured funding from the Rothschild Foundation

Wycombe Environment Centre secures Rothschild Foundation funding for its ground breaking community craft shop

Wycombe Environment Centre, that runs the Refresh shop in High Wycombe, has secured funding from the Rothschild Foundation. This is in addition to the £100,000+ over 3 years won from the Lottery’s Reaching Community Fund announced last month. Together this funding will drive our events programme and save more material from waste.

We are an upcycling and reuse community that shares, repairs, makes and creates, providing an easy alternative to buying new - inspiring people of High Wycombe and the wider area to take simple steps that reduce waste and increase our connections. In addition to the Refresh Shop, we also run the High Wycombe Repair Cafe, as well as annual bulb planting and other initiatives.

For the last 18 month Refresh has been wholly volunteer-led, with a strong team of 30-40 active volunteers and 7 trustees. The funding will allow us to employ staff again. These will help focus on our events and outreach, focusing on helping people develop craft skills that are so important to well being, as well as to help to save even more material from waste, and be able to better monitor our impact.

Wycombe Environment Centre was founded in 2001 by local superhero Frances Alexander and has been in a number of locations, and run a range of activities over the years.