St. Paul's has become the third official partner of the Crewe Prize Draw, with the next draw to take place at 7.30pm on Thursday 16 July.

The Crewe Prize Draw has been created to raise vital funds for organisations making a real difference in the community.

St Paul's Centre, with sites at Hightown and Wellington House, joins Hopes & Beams and The Wishing Well as organisations to receive regular funding through the fortnightly Crewe Prize Draw.

This partnership means local residents can continue supporting good causes in Crewe while also having the chance to win cash prizes every week.

ENTER CREWE PRIZE DRAW

Alongside the chance to win weekly cash prizes, players know their participation is helping organisations such as St Paul's Centre continue their vital work for local people.

CEO of St. Paul's Centre, Jez Chalmers, has exclusively spoken to Crewe Nub News about the Christian community charity, focusing on reducing social isolation and tackling health inequalities locally:

For people who haven't visited St Paul's Centre before, how would you describe what you do and who you help?

​Our core mission is to provide hope and practical help for local households. We manage nine distinct projects in the community, each targeting a specific area of practical need.

This encompasses running a food bank, coordinating a hospital discharge programme, and providing essential items like furniture and clothing.

Through these initiatives, we actively engage with and support people experiencing the direct realities of both material and social poverty.

​Every day must bring different challenges. Can you paint a picture of a typical day at St Paul's Centre?

​As CEO, my days are heavily focused on the future—balancing financial projections and sustainability with meeting our immediate operational goals.

A typical day can involve anything from filming marketing content for our supporters to fine-tuning individual project strategies or meeting with retail partners.

On the ground, our incredible volunteers drive our daily operations. In the food bank, they are busy packing single, couple, or family parcels tailored to daily needs, and greeting our "neighbours."

This is the term we choose to use instead of clients to promote dignity and equality, as they arrive to collect food.

What are the biggest issues facing people in Crewe today that perhaps aren't always visible?

​The sheer scale of the deprivation is often hidden from view.

Crewe currently remains in the top 10 per cent for deprivation statistics in the UK, and we have seen a staggering 156 per cent increase in overall need across Cheshire East.

What surprises many people is that poverty in our town has a heavily working face.

Locally, one in three children are going to school hungry.

Approximately 70 per cent of those children living in poverty belong to working households where parents are trying their hardest but simply cannot make ends meet.

​Can you share a story of someone whose life has been changed through the work of St Paul's Centre?

​We recently heard from a mother who came to our shoe project, "Sal's Shoes", after originally being referred to us for a fridge freezer.

Due to long-term physical health issues, she is unable to work, and she faced intense financial strain when her 12-year-old son returned to live with her full-time.

Caught between paying bills, buying food, and high school costs, she could not afford new trainers, meaning her son was wearing worn-out school shoes every single day.

Through the project, he was able to pick out a pair of trainers he loved.

This simple gift lifted a massive financial weight off her shoulders, allowing her to redirect funds to food and school uniforms while completely restoring her son's confidence among his peers.

Demand for charities seems to be increasing every year. What changes have you seen over the past five years?

​The landscape has become incredibly volatile and competitive. We are dealing with fewer available grants and significantly smaller funding pots.

At the same time, the cost-of-living crisis has created a double-edged sword: The demand for our food bank has broken records, yet public food donations and financial support have dropped off because everyone is feeling the squeeze.

This forces us to spend more of our own charity funds to buy food and bridge the gap.

Additionally, the same financial pressures mean people who used to have spare time to volunteer now have to take on extra work, making volunteer recruitment a major hurdle.

How important is local support from people and businesses in Crewe to everything you do?

​Local support is absolutely vital to our survival.

While we are well-established after 40 years of service, we are not a massive corporate charity, and we genuinely struggle financially every single month.

The backing we receive from local residents and businesses is what keeps our doors open, allows us to react to rising demands, and gives us the stability to think creatively about how we expand our services.

What does becoming a charity partner of the Crewe Prize Draw mean for St. Paul's Centre?

​Becoming a charity partner means a huge amount to everyone at the centre.

It provides us with a high-profile platform to share our story, raise awareness about the hidden poverty in our neighbourhood, and connect with a wider network of local people who want to make a difference.

​If additional funding came in through the prize draw, where would you most like to invest it?

​Any additional funding would be immediately directed toward sustaining and growing our core frontline projects.

Specifically, it would allow us to heavily invest in restocking our food bank reserves so we never have to turn a hungry family away.

It will also expand our school uniform and shoe initiatives, and ensure our community delivery vans can keep running to bring furniture and essentials to those completely isolated by poverty.

What do you think makes Crewe such a community-minded town?

​Crewe has a rich, gritty history built on industriousness, railway heritage, and working-together closely.

When times get tough, there is a distinct, deep-rooted instinct among the people here to look out for one another.

It is a town that understands hardship, which means it is also a town full of immense empathy, resilience, and a quiet determination to ensure no neighbour gets left behind.

ENTER CREWE PRIZE DRAW

​If you could say one thing directly to every resident of Crewe reading this article, what would it be?

​I would want to tell them that no act of kindness is ever too small.

Whether you donate a single tin of soup, give up two hours of your week to volunteer, or support initiatives like the prize draw, you are directly changing a life right here in your own town.

Poverty can feel like an overwhelming issue, but when the community of Crewe acts together, we have the power to bring real hope and dignity back to our neighbours' lives.

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The Crewe Prize Draw launches with a simple aim, to create winners locally - all while supporting causes like Wishing Well.