"The Storeroom" Furniture Project

The Storeroom Project is an initiative of the Real World Trust - a proactive charity operating on the Isle of Wight, recyling furniture within the community to help vulnerable people.

The project also offers Island residents the opportunity to really help their community and environment!

By taking items of furniture that otherwise would have been taken to the landfill site, and refurbishing them to provide good quality furniture to members of the community who are not able to furnish their own homes. The local environment is helped together with Island residents.

The Storeroom came into existence following a feasibility study undertaken at the end of 2002 to identify if the public would respond to requests for furniture etc. and we were inundated with offers.

On the 1st April 2004, the Storeroom Project was awarded funding from CRED (Community Recycling and Economic Development). The main aim of Storeroom is to collect and recycle donated furniture and other household items, then distribute the same to disadvantaged and vulnerable groups at an affordable cost.

Furniture and other donated items are distributed to those referred by statutory and voluntary agencies, those generally being individuals who are recovering from alcohol or drug addiction or a period of chaos in their lives or who are otherwise disadvantaged.

We are committed to increasing the ability of individuals and families who want to work or volunteer within their capacity to find gainful employment or give them the opportunity to volunteer. In all these processes we will endeavour to increase community awareness to the problems of waste management and improving the environment by providing educational information indicating how the individual may help. In addition, this enables the individual to gain confidence, improves social contact and therefore dignity, quality of life and a sense of community.

Storeroom is also committed to reducing landfill and waste in general by recycling timber and other elements of unusable donations.