From our residential community in Winchester, Emmaus Hampshire provides a home and tailored support for up to 40 people, known as Emmaus companions. To sustain the support offered at our community, we generate the majority of our charity’s income through our social enterprise and three charity stores across Hampshire.
Everybody we support contributes within our charity and social enterprise to the best of their ability, alongside local volunteers. This includes helping within our charity stores, collecting and delivering household items, repairing and refurbishing furniture, or cooking within our community home and café. Through this daily activity, our community members can build their skills, confidence and experience to help towards their future goals.
Emmaus Hampshire's positive impact
As well as being Hampshire’s unique solution to homelessness, Emmaus delivers significant environmental, sustainable and social impact. Through our social enterprise, we save household items from the waste chain and in so doing, prevent more than 350,000 tonnes of carbon being released into the atmosphere each year. The people we support are also encouraged to carry out acts of solidarity, supporting people and groups affected by poverty and social injustice.
Homelessness is cruel and relentless
Sometimes, luck doesn’t go your way, or life throws you a run of difficult challenges. You may suffer a bereavement, a relationship breakup, lose your job or be evicted from your home.
Your options become limited, and you can easily find yourself homeless, sofa-surfing or on the streets, feeling invisible and losing confidence, self-esteem and hope. Faced with this situation, many people feel the chances to turn their life back around are few and far between.
Homelessness doesn’t just mean you lose your home. Every day becomes harder and harder to go on. You lose your health, your connections, your reason for going on and, eventually, yourself. When you do find help, all too often it’s only temporary – a hot meal, a donation of clothing or shelter for a night or two. Across the country, longer-term options for housing and tailored support are becoming increasingly limited.
Emmaus (pronounced em-may-us) is different to many services and organisations supporting people who find themselves homeless. We don’t give people a bed for a night. Our Emmaus community provides a stable home, individual support and life-changing opportunities to enable people to break the cycle of homelessness. We do this by harnessing everyone’s potential – using the power of community, social enterprise and solidarity to help people regain their self-respect, build their skills, boost their confidence and achieve their potential.
Read on to learn more about our charity and how you can give your support or get involved to make a difference to lives of our community members.
