Everyone deserves a place called home. For women who have experienced the trauma of rough sleeping, a safe and stable home can feel like a distant dream. We've got the opportunity to transform a property in London into a place that can give 18 women the support they need to recover from trauma and find new friends, skills and confidence.
By supporting the 18 Keys project you'll help these women to gain the help they need to rebuild their lives. Please donate now. This project will cost £1.8m; every donation counts.
Your support will help 18 women to have a safe home and a new start.
These are women who have had their lives shattered by domestic and sexual violence, substance abuse, acute poverty, and the breakdown of family ties. They represent the most vulnerable and hard to reach group of all those who experience homelessness. Services need to be urgently improved to support them more effectively. This project will serve as a model of its kind, to show how this can be achieved.
Right now there are no shared spaces and no communal kitchen or eating areas, and no rooms for one to one meetings.
With your help we can create a new building on an existing property so we can provide the support women deserve. This vital additional space will offer the right environment for training and therapeutic work.
At the heart of the new building there will be a community kitchen with space for women to cook and eat together, watch films and develop skills such as art, drama, gardening, IT, and yoga. All of these new activities will be co-produced with the community of women living at the site.
Above the kitchen we will build meeting rooms where women can get professional support in privacy.
There will be new bedrooms with shared bathrooms which will act as "move on" accommodation for those getting near to being able to live fully independent lives again.
There will also be storage areas to keep emergency bedding so that we can house extra people during extreme weather. These facilities can so often be life saving.