Auction Event Sponsored by Kings Estate Agents to raise funds for Global Garden and Kitchen in Tottenham [28TH NOV 2013]

NEWS RELEASE
For immediate release 21st October 2013 

• (1) The Selby Trust provides a range of community-led services, including facilities management, under the banner of "Many Cultures, One Community". It manages the Selby Centre - probably the second largest community centre in England and Wales.  www.selbytrust.co.uk 

• The Selby Centre is a £1m social enterprise operation based in Tottenham, Haringey and is a success story against the odds: almost 80% of its income is self-generated from incubating and supporting social enterprises that hire out community facilities at the Selby Centre at affordable rates. 

• The Selby Centre was created as a community centre in 1985 from disused school premises. After the Council’s own failed attempt at running it, threatened closure was fought off by the local community. 

• The Selby Trust was born in 1992 to rescue the centre and safeguard local communities against Government cuts. The Council turned over the Centre to the Selby Trust on a 25 year lease in 1997 with full repairing obligations. Eleven short years remain, insufficient to attract serious capital investment. 

• The organisations at the Selby Centre read like a checklist of the government’s Big Society agenda: providing citizenship and employability training for the local Somali community; social care providers for vulnerable people; training organisations aimed at helping ex-offenders, young people without work, the long-term unemployed; and job support agencies working with those who are hardest to reach. There is also a developing plan for a free school. 

• In 2010, Selby Trust was listed in RBS’s UK Top 100 Social Enterprise Index for growth and in November 2012, the Selby Trust was awarded the Social Enterprise Mark as a result of dedication to improving the community and our fast growing Green Hub - incubating on-site enterprises Wood Works Wonders, The Community Energy Lab and fundraising for the Global Garden, Global Kitchen Project with partners Spacehive HYPERLINK "http://www.spacehive.com/selbytrustglobalgarden".  

• (1) Spacehive is the world’s first funding platform for civic projects – making it as easy to fund a new park or playground for your area as buying a book online. We spend most of our time working with communities to develop an amazing mix of projects, looking around for new ideas, and reaching out to people who might like to get involved. We love what we're doing, and who we're doing it with.