CRUMBS comprises five projects:

• CRUMBS Café: the attractive 24-seater CRUMBS Café, with its' sizeable kitchen, allows for thoughtful & imaginative tuition.  All food is home-made, prepared/ cooked and served by the Trainees under careful supervision.
• CRUMBS Finger Buffet Service: Monday to Friday freshly-baked, flex-menu lunch-time service.  Now launching afternoon teas & picnic boxes.
• CRUMBS Sandwich Service to local business.
• CRUMBS Tuck Boxes supplies snacks to offices on a weekly basis.
• CRUMBS original iced fruit cakes.

Twelve years of hard work has enabled this charity to grow from a "one-man-and-a-handful- of-trainees" into the present operation.  Support from a number of grant making trusts which recognized the value of this work helped make this possible.   Now changes in government priorities will mean withdrawal of support from many of the most- needy amongst us, and future provision dictates that we must learn to stand on our own two feet.

Training Places & Corporate Social Responsibility:

Even in the present financially challenging business climate, concern for the less able in our midst is apparent.  In this, our first approach to you, we are seeking twenty businesses who would consider underwriting the cost of half a training place for one or more years at a cost to you of £4,500.  To date we have secured one and a half places: please help make this target attainable.  Budget projections are available and we can supply any information you require.

Other measures of support

Payroll giving:  We are interested in talking to organisations which might consider CRUMBS for their Staff payroll-giving scheme.

Do you have Staff who would like to become involved with CRUMBS: we are looking for new skills in marketing on our Board of Management. 

Adopt CRUMBS as your Charity for the year: fund raising events?

Individual involvement: We have recently been contacted by someone who said: "I have had five healthy children who are all doing well.  I have six healthy grandchildren who are also doing well.  It is time to give something back".  Result:  A regular payment to CRUMBS on a monthly basis: 100 people giving £5/ £10 per month would pay part of the salary for a member of Staff.  Could there be someone else who feels the same?  It is not always the wealthy who drive things forward.

As opportunity occurs, we are looking to establish an endowment fund, enabling flexibility in planning and good staff retention.

We approach you in the knowledge that no Trustee remuneration is ever asked for, nor given: all monies raised are solely spent on the Projects which have been established for the benefit of the persons within our areas of disability

"Crumbs training gave me the confidence to move from sheltered accommodation to my own flat.  I learned to cook at Crumbs and now make most of my own food at home.  Since leaving Crumbs, I've got a full time job working in a cafe."  This is the first paid job I have ever had."

"I like working in Crumbs kitchen best. I have learnt to cook and I am good at making soup.  I would like to do a cooking course at college when I leave Crumbs"

PLEASE SUPPORT CRUMBS AND HELP OTHERS LIKE OURSELVES

Experience shows that:
 

Increased confidence improves learning skills, health & employability: more than 80% of people completing the course leave with qualification(s) which fit them for the hospitality trade.

Employment, which can start on a part-time basis, has been converted to full-time working as the reliability of our Trainees becomes appreciated.

That we can further support former Trainees in the role of volunteers, helping to train new recruits, whilst themselves still researching suitable employment.  They are highly valued, understanding the problems of many new entrants as they face working with the public for the first time.

In 2008 the value of CRUMBS to this Community was recognized by the award to the Chief Executive of both an MBE for "services to mental illness through the CRUMBS Project in Bournemouth" and that of Community Champion by Boscombe Neighbourhood Management.  CRUMBS Café was also been awarded a Gold Star by our Environmental Health Officers.