Thetford Meet-up Cafe Project Update 2

Today was my 7th working day at the new project… time flies hey! A lot has happened since that very cold first day on the 4th January!! We (myself and Tina Westgarth – Cafe Development Worker) spent the first week pretty much engaged in cleaning what we could and putting initial things into place. Once the heating was sorted, there was a whole list of other contractors / suppliers we needed to speak to. The carpets need to be cleaned, the curtains in the hall as well, need to get the whole place painted and decorated, electricians quotes, new windows etc etc etc It is all being hampered by the fact the hole in the roof remains and we have been unable to obtain quotes as companies could not get onto the roof and assess what is needed while it was covered with snow. Now that it has all gone, we are hoping to make some quick progress with this. The downside of having a non-frozen roof of course is that all of the water is now coming through again and we have a wet carpet! Today I got all of the window shutters up and attacked the very thick cobwebs and some mean looking spiders with a big broom!! Windows need to be cleaned, and frames repainted. We’ve been very fortunate to have a number of people pop-in and offer to volunteer, probably about 7 people have now completed volunteer application forms and a number of others have said they will pop-in at some point. Much work to do in terms of processing these, completing CRB checks, arranging for inductions and sourcing the necessary training, getting name badges sorted etc. Tomorrow will be a very good day as we should be having our new computers delivered and getting connected to the internet and email!! that should help us get things underway. Been having lots of conversations about the sorts of activities that can take place in the building, hope to involve as many people as possible in due course to get ideas and get many people involved in supporting the project. I’ve now created a Thetford Meet-up Cafe user on Facebook, so feel free to ‘Add as a friend’ if you use Facebook!! Also, click here to see a great article about the project in last Thursdays EDP:- http://www.edp24.co.uk/content/edp24/news/story.aspx?brand=EDPOnline&category=News&tBrand=EDPOnline&tCategory=xDefault&itemid=NOED13%20Jan%202010%2017:44:28:480