Our Services
Everything we do
Every single activity that we run responds to a need in the community. We learn about what people need by speaking to people every time they visit the shop and offer them opportunities to share what they think will help them. Every single workshop, event, activity exists because our community has asked for it.
Our Free Shop
To help relieve people from financial pressure, our Free Shop offers fresh fruit, vegetables, pulses, canned and dried goods, meat, dairy, snacks, condiments, sanitary items and baby items. Open 5 days a week, customers are given an allocation to spend, depending on the number of people in their household, and can browse and choose items as they wish, with dignity. The shop is run by our Operations Manager, and a wonderful team of volunteers, many of whom were and are customers themselves. They speak with customers as they visit, learn about their challenges, build relationships with them, and help them learn about the other services available to them from us or the wider community.
Our Free Shop Offer
To help people get on the pathway out of financial hardship, we encourage our customers, and the wider community, to engage with what they need from our ‘Free Shop Offer’. This includes the following activities:
• A Community Cafe, attended by 200 people per week, for people to enjoy a safe warm space, free hot and cold drinks, treats and hot meal, to meet people, participate in positive activities (such as sewing, painting, drawing, etc.), and get help from partners (such as housing, debt advice, Citizens advice, and mental health coaching etc.).
• The TLC Tea group supported 40 particularly vulnerable people last year. In small groups, we support particularly vulnerable people (including survivors of domestic violence, people in hiding, people with HIV, refugees etc) who need to build confidence before attending additional services.
• 6 workshops/courses and 1:1 support, attended by 386 people last year, designed to upskill, educate, and empower people to get over their financial issues (e.g wellbeing, mental health, debt advice, form filling, energy saving, or cooking).
• Free Access to our Learning Lab, attended by 300 people last year, to use laptops for form-filling, research, online banking, job hunting, and interview prep. Plus attend partner led courses (e.g. wellbeing, EAL, CV workshops) or meet privately with partners like Housing, Pathfinders, and Employ Crawley.
Our fun, social events and activities
To ensure people feel part of a community, and have opportunities to participate in fun, exciting and social experiences that promote good health and wellbeing, we invite our community to one/any of our 10 free annual events. These include our Christmas Grotto, Harvest Festival, Summer Fair, Easter event, and more! Our 2025 Summer Fair had 3500 attendees!
Operating from the Bewbush Community centre in Crawley, we also bring people together as often as we can, through all our events, workshops, community cafe, and the safe space that our centre provides. We’re building a wide network of customers, volunteers, staff members, local residents, supporters, partners and businesses that can support each other through difficult times, both in and out of FreeShop.
Check out what’s coming up on our social media channels Facebook, Instagram, Tiktok.
To see how our needs, activities and outcomes, click here.