A community based charity in Co Antrim are offering a number of services to help the local community during the cost of living crisis.
A Safe Space to Be Me are based in both Antrim and Crumlin, offering a place of sanctuary for the local community where they can come and make use of the facilities.
Speaking to Belfast Live, charity co-founder Siobhain Murphy explained that the lived experience of the staff helps them better understand what the local community are going through.
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"People think Crumlin is an affluent area but realistically, it is just sitting above the poverty line," she said.
"One of our other directors, Carolyn Tailford moved to Crumlin and realised that there wasn't the services here which existed in other towns.
"I had known Carolyn for a while and she asked one day if I would be interested in starting a charity as my background is in family support.
"The next day, she applied to the Charities Commission, she had a constitution sorted and had everything done that we needed to do.
"We then looked at what services we could provide without premises and Carolyn had already been counselling at a private practice in Antrim.
"She knew that a lot of people who needed counselling services couldn't afford to pay privately so we launched a counselling service out of her office in Antrim initially."
As the service grew, they outgrew their space and have had to move three times as their offering expanded.
"In Crumlin we were initially based on Orchard Road before our current premises became available in 2019," Siobhain said.
"Carolyn had the vision to expand our services to help the local community and she started offering training for people to become counsellors.
"When the pandemic hit, we started to put out meals which our volunteers were delivering along with boxes from the Department for Communities.
"As we started to get back to normality we realised that we had all of these people who needed our help and we decided to launch an honesty café to offer them a place to come, grab something to eat and a chat."
As the cost of fuel has risen, the charity have launched an Oil Club which allows the local area to club together to purchase oil at a discounted rate.
"Once a month we will put out a call for orders, collate it all and approach different suppliers to ask them to give us the best price for the combined amount of oil required and then when they come back, we let everyone who has placed an order know who the cheapest supplier is and then they ring them to make the payment and arrange delivery.
"It saves people money and I know there is a lot of people who will wait until the oil club opens if they can. We get a lot of people who would order 200 litres a month which is enough for them to keep topped up.
"The price of oil is now the lowest that it has been in a while, but at the same time if something happens in the world, that could go up again."
In addition to this, the group have recently launched a warm space scheme which offers a range of activities throughout the day including knitting, flower arranging, photography and cooking lessons so that people can come out and socialise without having to worry about putting the heating on.
"We are very aware that there are people out there who could be sitting at home freezing but if they come here, they can stay for as long as they need.
"We are here from half 8 in the morning until half 4 at night. They don't have to sit in a cold house if they don't want to, they can come and sit here."
The Crumlin Hub also houses a community larder where people can come and access free fresh ingredients which would have been thrown out by retailers.
"We get donations from various retailers who give us stuff which they can no longer keep on the shelves but that there is nothing wrong with.
"We could have anything from potatoes to broccoli and bananas along with different types of bread. We also have retailers who donate frozen meat to us and the whole idea is that if they don't use it, it will only go in the bin.
"It helps cut food waste and indirectly helping people who are struggling to put food on the table."
The work that the team do hasn't gone unnoticed with Siobhain and Carolyn recently being awarded BEMs in the King's New Year's Honours List.
This came after the organisation were award the Queen's Award for Voluntary Service in January 2021 and earlier this year they scooped the top award in their category at the Pride of Place Island of Ireland Awards.
"It is nice to get the recognition but we don't do it for that, we do it because there is a need," Siobhain added. "We see that need and we have been in some of these situations ourselves so we have the lived experience."
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