Winton Flower Club

Winton Flower Club, which recently disbanded after 62 years, have donated a bench to Critchley community hub, using the last of the money from their coffers.

The donation comes after the gardens at the community hub was refurbished over the summer by a team of volunteers to provide a green space at the community centre.

Former Chair of the Winton Flower Club, Gloria Egan officially declared the bench open last week at the community centre, which included a ribbon-cutting and the reading of a touching poem.

Credit: Age UK Salford, Paul Sherlock
“The Bench” – a poem was written and read by Gloria Egan at the ceremony.

The Critchley community centre offers several activities for anyone who wants to join them, including a gardening group, a creative writing group and a local history day on the first Saturday of the month, which has proven very popular.

The community centre is run almost entirely by volunteers from the community. Joy Kershaw, manager of the centre spoke about the importance of volunteers in keeping the centre going, she said: “We wouldn’t be able to keep this place going without our amazing volunteers, if they see someone sitting alone in the centre, they will do whatever they can to involve them.

“The atmosphere that we have at the centre is down to the volunteers’ commitment to the community.”

Group activities are an important aspect of the centre they’re not all that the centre offers. Joy said: “The centre is not just for people who are involved in group activities, it operates predominantly as a café, we have a chef in every day and I think news of the café is spreading around the community.

Winton Flower Club at the Critchley Community Centre. Image was taken from Age UK Salford, Credit: Paul Sherlock

“We also have a charity shop in the community centre for which we rely greatly on donations of clothes and board games etc as the centre is entirely self-funded so anyway that we can make money is great for us.”

You can get involved in the Critchley community hub you can do so by volunteering or by donating things you don’t need to be sold in their charity shop.

The AgeUK Salford website has all the information you need to volunteer or donate, you can find it here.

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