Reach Community Projects

Reach Community Projects believes in restoring dignity & hope

We believe that everyone deserves to live their lives to the full. However, poverty has a devastating effect on individual and family life. Debt, low income and homelessness can lead to mental health problems, relationship breakdown, low aspiration, marginalisation, poor health and low self-esteem.

The purpose of Reach is to tackle poverty in Haverhill and its surrounding villages, restoring people’s dignity and reviving their hope.

To assist us with our mission we run a number of projects and activities aimed at uncovering and resolving the root issues that our clients are experiencing:

• Resource Centre – A drop-in centre and access point for all Reach resources, open weekdays, providing a warm welcome and practical help for people struggling with poverty, eg. housing, benefit, form completion, job searching and so much more
• Money Advice – Free face to face debt advice for people struggling with debt
• Foodbank – Emergency food for unexpected crises
• Starter Packs – Essential bedding and kitchenware when someone literally has nothing
• Client Aid – Financial assistance through donation based projects such as Acts 435 to provide essential items such as beds, white goods, gas and electricity
• Reach into the Community – All of the Reach resources taken out to those that cannot get in to see us whether it’s because of ill health or geographical reasons.

Our key values are:

• Generosity – If in doubt, we will always seek to be generous
• Responsibility – This has to be coupled with responsibility both from the people we are helping and how we distribute the resources entrusted to us
• Believing for better – Our current circumstances do not have to determine our future
• Honesty – Just as we need the people we are helping to be honest with us, we too need to be honest about what we can realistically do to help them

Founded by River of Life Community Church in 2005, we initially founded a debt counselling centre. We went on to launch further projects in the fight against poverty under the name of Reach Community Projects and became an independent charity on 1st April 2017.