Hope for future

The charity shop in Sea Road was opened in April 2007 with the specific aim of raising funds to build a drug and alcohol rehabilitation centre in Lamka, in the Manipur region of North East India.

Shop Manager Brian Allen commented: "We achieved charitable status at the end of March so we are now officially a registered charity - it took a little while to get there.

"We are very pleased with how it has gone. You don't know when you set this sort of thing up what is going to happen, but we have had many people who have given us goods to sell and many others have been in the shop to buy them.

"We have recruited local people who have become volunteers. We are very pleased with the way the shop has gone in the first year."

One way of collecting money has been via the brick boxes available in the shop - supporters take a cardboard brick away and keep it at home to fill with loose change. By March this year the boxes had generated 1,658 and paid for purchase and delivery of real bricks - each costing just 4p - to the building site in Lamka.

Brian thanked supporters of the Hope Foundation Trust shop - both visitors and volunteers.

"Incidentally we do at present have one or two vacancies due partly to helpers having to leave to take on paid employment and to one of our younger helpers expecting a happy event in May. So if you are still young at heart and would like to help us out do call into the shop and see us. If you haven't found us yet, please call in - we may have just what you have been looking for, even if you didn't know it."