Active Community Enterprise (ACE), a Merseyside-based social enterprise that puts people with learning difficulties at the heart of everything it does, has recently taken on a disused community site in Lee Valley, L25 with the plan of turning it into a food and plant-growing hub for the local community.
ACE, who run numerous projects across Merseyside, already run a 5 day a week gardening project across South Liverpool, tending to over a hundred elderly and disabled people’s gardens. They are now calling for the local community to get involved, and plan to use the former garages and storage site on Marsham Road for the benefit of residents.
Steve Reed, manager at ACE said:
“I visited London recently and I decided to visit this gardening project run by the community. It had everyone involved, – young and old, disabled and abled – there was real respect amongst people, there was a real community spirit and such a buzz that I didn’t bother going to see the sights; I stayed there all day! When I came home I thought, we could do that in our local community, we could make that happen, and now Riverside Housing have given us an initial 3 year permission to use one of their sites.”
ACE was established in 2009 by Steve Reed, Steve Percival and Laurenna Reed, former support workers who wanted to offer more excitement and choice to people with learning difficulties.
ACE offers quality training, qualifications, voluntary and paid employment to its clients, as well as a chance to develop friendships. This improves people’s lives, their feelings of self-worth and social status, enabling ACE and its clients to give back to the community.
ACE would also like to put out an appeal for gardening tools to help with the turning around of the site.
For more information on the community site phone Laurenna at ACE on 0151-290 1441, or visit the ACE ” Active Community Enterprise” Facebook page.