Emmaus Hull & East Riding has launched an urgent appeal for help to replace the vans used for our homeless outreach service.
Emmaus Hull & East Riding provides a home, training, work opportunities and individual support to people who have experienced homelessness. In addition to our residential community, we also deliver an outreach service, providing direct support to people who are street homeless.
Stephanie Cooper, Director of Emmaus Hull & East Riding, said: “Over the past few weeks, we’ve had two lots of bad news, with both of our old Emmaus outreach vans now broken beyond repair. The vans are essential to our service as they cover many miles each day, enabling our outreach support team to reach and help people who are homeless and sleeping rough across the East Riding.”
“We have launched an urgent fundraising appeal but are also open to any help, either in the interim, or in finding permanent replacements. Our outreach team ideally need an MPV (multi-purpose vehicle), crew-van or combi-van and we’re appealing to individuals, local businesses, fleet hire companies or anyone with a spare van for help at this challenging time.”
Our Emmaus outreach team includes trained support workers, local volunteers and people with lived experience of homelessness. The team often starts work at 5am to meet people who are street homeless and provide friendly advice, items, signposting and access to further support.
The team had recently started a year-long, 500-mile walking challenge to raise funds to put towards replacing one of their vans. However, not long after launching the fundraising challenge, both vans experienced serious mechanical issues with the costs of repair much more than our charity can afford.
Find out more and support our van appeal today.