Green-Works is an award winning social enterprise and registered charity dedicated to helping the environment by diverting redundant office and school furniture from landfill by providing reused and remanufactured furniture to small business, charities, schools and community groups whilst providing training and real work experience to the unemployed.

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Events

Snowdon Climb

July 24th 2010

A team from Green-Works is aiming to climb Mount Snowdon to raise funds for its Africa Appeal. We want to modernise schools and clinics in Waterloo, Sierra Leone, and any support you can give us is greatly received.

Sierra Leone

Sierra Leone is officially the worst country in the world to be born. One in three children will die – usually from minor, preventable diseases – before their fifth birthday and average life expectancy is just 42 years.

£10 provides 1 desk and chair and with over 1,000 children in each school we have a long way to go before we can provide furniture for all...but this is a great start.

Without this furniture children have to spend hours sitting on muddy and wet floors (often fighting over the luxury of a rock to sit on). Many of the schools are simple shacks which may sound ok - it's nice and warm out there...but what happens in the wet season? the roof has holes in and often there are no walls at all. However these are the lucky children as they get to go to school.

To be able to go to school you need to pay not only fees, but for uniform, books, note pads and FURNITURE! most can't afford this, so Green-Works providing this furniture for free reduces the costs of education 

Waterloo

The town where most of Green-Works furniture ends up- has a population of about 30,000 people who live in poverty. They have no clean running water, open sewers and electricity just two or three times a week. There is one health clinic – it has no doctor, and only a couple of nurses- and conditions are unsanitary and unhygienic.

There are about 75 schools, but they lack any furniture, books or pens and other vital equipment for learning. Children often sit on the concrete and mud floors to learn and they have to pay to go to school. Their future could be bright- there is investment into Sierra Leone but without as much as a basic education, local children will not be able to get the benefits that this investment brings. They and their families will be stuck in a cycle of poverty.

Green-Works is trying to improve the standard of education in Waterloo by equipping schools with items that we take for granted. Desks and chairs allow children to learn in comfort, while cabinets provide a safe and dry storage area for books, notepads and other school equipment. We provide a unique solution to the problems presented from sending unwanted furniture to landfill, by storing it, raising funds to ship it, and delivering it to a place where it is needed, appreciated and more importantly, put to good use.