6 months ago
We spoke to Ace of Clubs about the amazing work that they do in and around Clapham. Read on to find out how you can get involved too.
Hi Charlie, thanks for having us today. You work for Ace of Clubs, a local charity based here in Clapham. Can you tell us a bit about your purpose and how you serve the local community.
We’re a day centre, open Monday to Friday, and we provide lunches for homeless and vulnerable people. We’re currently serving anywhere from 120 to 200 lunches a day. Because Ace of Clubs has been here for so long, we’ve had the ability to be able to add on to our services. So not only are we providing lunch, but we also do shower services three days a week. We do a washing service almost every day. We have caseworkers and support workers. We have an outreach team from Lambeth. We have a foot clinic that comes in once a month. The idea is that we will support any way we can to the local people.
It sounds like you’ve got a whole range of helpful services there. Clapham’s often associated with affluence and being quite a middle class area. What’s the need for those kinds of services like?
We find the need is very high. Because it’s so established I think that the community do know about us, but there is a huge divide between the affluent and the not affluent. As I said, we are serving a lot of people and we’re getting a lot of new people from the area coming in using Ace of Clubs services for various reasons. I guess there is a big divide between the two and the need is very high.
Hi, Lucy! You’re a volunteer here at the Ace of Clubs. What’s a typical day like?
A typical day is very busy. There’s lots to do. We normally come into the centre early and we start with packaging up all the goods that have come in from the shops and sort what we can put into our shop to give away. Then prepping food! There’s lots of chopping that has to be done to help the chef and then just setting up the centre essentially for the service users to come in at lunchtime.
How do we get involved?
Anyone can get involved, whether you can offer just a day or you can offer more regular services to the centre. It’s very easy. You can email us via the website (the contact details are on there) or just send us a DM on Instagram. We need everybody with lots of different skills to serve in the centre. If you’ve got technical skills you can help us with things like the website and the social media, and then Christmas time is a very busy period for us. So we need volunteers to come in and help us there as well.
