Radio Adverts - £500

Flyers - £250

Subline heat transfers with logo for handmade products - £150

Online/paper Adverts - £250

Pop Up Banner -£150

Logos for car - vinal transfers-£200

We will use local businesses to provide our marketing materials such as Three Towns Radio & Ardrossan Printers and Ardrossan Herald

The Garden Haven will be a purpose-built community space within the Community Roots Garden in West Kilbride – a once-derelict site reclaimed by local people four years ago and steadily developed into a thriving community asset. The Haven is a stand-alone project that will provide a base to connect our Community Garden and Village Larder with wider holistic aims of wellbeing, sustainability, and education.  

This welcoming, sustainable building will build on the community’s success in transforming neglected land and place it into fuller use, directly supporting North Ayrshire’s Community Wealth Building strategy. It will create opportunities for skills, learning, and local enterprise while ensuring that wellbeing services are accessible to everyone, regardless of income.  

From the Haven we will deliver workshops on sustainable growing practices, nutrition, and the use of herbs for health, alongside stress management and complementary therapies. These activities promote healthier lifestyles, reduce environmental impact, and help people adopt low-cost, sustainable choices. Sessions will be offered free or on a pay-what-you-can basis, tackling inequalities in access to wellbeing. Through partnerships with the local college’s complementary therapy courses and local holistic practitioners, the project will also support education, fair work experience, and local expertise.  

Costs and Funding  

• Phase 1 – Core Build: £59,849. Due to commence end of October 2025. Funding secured: £50,000 (National Lottery Community Led Fund). £5000 Communities Mental Health & Wellbeing Fund Shortfall: £4849

• Phase 2 – Finishing & Sustainability (decking, fencing, landscaping, solar panels, battery storage, decorating and furnishing): £18900

With support, the Garden Haven will complete the transformation of a once-neglected site into a sustainable, community-owned hub for wellbeing, learning, and environmental resilience 

The Community Wealth Building award will go towards the outlined costs and we are seeking out other sources of funding for the remainder. We aim to be completed by Spring 2025

Community Café Enhancement**

We are seeking funding to enhance the visibility and functionality of our Community Café, which plays a vital role in our local area yet remains underutilised. Many local workers and residents are unaware that our café is open to everyone, resulting in missed opportunities for community engagement and funding generation for our local initiatives.

Our  Goals

1. Increase awareness of the café among local residents and passing workers.

2. Boost visitor numbers to generate income for our community projects.

3. Create a welcoming and inclusive environment through improved outdoor seating and signage.

Impact- The café serves as a cornerstone of community wellbeing. It provides affordable meals, a friendly meeting place, and a safe space for all residents. Our café hosts various activities aimed at reducing social isolation, and an increase in visitor numbers will enable us to diversify and expand our event offerings, providing further benefits to the local area.

By adding outdoor seating, we will attract more customers, particularly during the summer months. This will not only accommodate dog walkers and families but also create opportunities for increased income that can be reinvested into improving our services.

Benefits of Increased Footfall

- Sustained and enhanced community events. - Greater income flow to support more activities.

- A stronger sense of community cohesion and engagement.

Cost Breakdown

To realise our vision of a bustling Community Café, we require funding for the following items:

Signage Costs:

- Circle Stamp: £10.37  - Mesh Banners: £58.98  - Outdoor A-Frame Signs: £94.51 

- Indoor Banner Without Eyelets: £121.48  Total Signage Costs: £342.41 (Inc VAT) 

Outdoor Seating Costs: - 16 Stacking Bistro Seats: £260  - 8 Bistro Tables: £320 

- Delivery: £45.00  - Total Outdoor Seating Costs: £624.88 

Total Funding Request: £967.41

 Investing in improved signage and outdoor seating is a cost-effective strategy to capitalise on the café’s potential. With this funding, we can transform our Community Café into an inviting hub of activity, fostering greater community interaction and enhancing the overall quality of life for residents. We appreciate your consideration and support in helping us realise this vision.

Mecoco means "Meaningful Contribution in the Community". We make beautifully hand-crafted home fragrance products-candles, wax melts, and reed diffusers-but our real purpose is about people. Our volunteers, most of whom are profoundly disabled and have complex communication and support needs, are involved in every stage of the process, creating products that are as unique, colourful, and creative as they are.

Our volunteers are not defined by what they can't do. Instead, they are recognised and celebrated for what they can. Many are non-verbal, use wheelchairs, or need full-time care-and yet at Mecoco they take on real responsibilities. They clock in, work in teams, wear uniforms, take tea breaks, and receive expenses-just like any workplace. They are proud to be part of something meaningful. And they belong.

Based in our Dalry workshop our opportunties include:

Volunteering for local disabled and non-disabled people for one half day session each week, in small groups throughout the week.

Work experience (6 week placements) for young people from local ASN school, Lockhart School

Long term highly skilled employment for our two Wax Wizards who support volunteers to maximise the range of tasks each volunteer can be involved in and allow volunteers to be involved in more complex tasks. They are also responsible for order production and packing, stock checking and ordering materials, and new product design.

Being part of Mecoco brings huge benefits to our team including:

Health and Wellbeing

In addition to the skills development, job satisfaction, personal fulfillment, and positive sense of identity from completing meaningful tasks that Mecoco work experience provides, it also offers huge social benefits for volunteers who get to experience being part of a team, being involved and contributing within their community.

All volunteers experience the health and wellbeing benefits from meeting new people, making friends, inclusion within the Mecoco team and the wider community, developing new skills, and helping others to learn new skills and fulfill their potential.

Bringing Communties Together

We're proud to say that Mecoco brings together one of the most diverse workforces in the country. Disabled and non-disabled people work side by side, learning from each other in a space that is fun, respectful, and deeply inclusive.

In addition to providing meaningful work experience, volunteering with Mecoco improves social inclusion, helping to overcome the isolation and marginalisation that people with complex needs often experience, particularly after they have left school and do not have access to the opportunities for employment, volunteering and education open to their non disabled peers.

Through the time spent working together in small teams each week, as well as an active WhatsApp chat to bring the whole group together, the volunteers have developed a lovely supportive community and engage in social activities and are also fully included within Sense Scotland events such as our Annual Ball and Staff and Violunteer Awards, with one of the volunteers shortlisted for 2024s Volunteer of the Year.

We also attend markets, fayres and events and volunteers often play a key role in these events, selling their products directly to other members of the community, changing perception of disability and demonstrating their abilities.

To support the sustainability and growth of Mecoco we have been looking at reducing our costs and one way was to move our website from the Shopify platform to WooCommerce, saving £2500 per year. We would like to invest in Facebook advertising for our new website. In particular to offer the following

We have the ability to offer customers a variety of Subscription Plans to guarantee monthly income and an increase in these product sales. We currently offer one subsciption option but would like to add the following (with every 4, 6 and 8 week options):

Surprise Subscription-Different products dependent on the price point chosen. £10/£15/£20 per month

Wax melt only subscription-Wax melts only, quantity dependent on the price point chosen. £5/£10/£15 per month

Diffuser subscription-Refills or new diffusers dependent on the price point chosen. £10/£15/£20 per month

We require to advertise these new products and would like to target customers online. We are requesting a grant of £2000 to cover the cost of the Facebook ads.

We have experience of using Facebook ads to promote our events, with recent examples including:

Abseil-£100 spent, 170 leads generated. This led to 6 participants and £640 fundraised income so far with fundraising still ongoing

Psychic Night-£250 spent, 207 leads generated. This led to 40 ticket sales and an estimated £974 in income, including ticket sales of £650

This experience gives us confidence that this approach would also be effective to boost Mecoco sales.

Supporting this request would enable us to increase our sales income and also offers regular income which allows us to plan ahead in terms of production and volunteer numbers. Most importantly increasing our income will allow us to sustain and grow Mecoco which allows us to continue to bring the benefits of being part of the Mecoco team to our current volunteers and open up the vital opportunties to other disabled young people and adults.

Your support would directly benefit some of the most marginalised individuals in our community. People for whom society often holds very low expectations. People who are seen as a burden, when in reality, they have so much to offer-if given the chance.

If successful, the CWB funding would allow us to bring in a consultant to strengthen our branding and marketing. As a charity, we have grown significantly in both our size and the support we provide, and we want to make sure we can fully showcase the breadth of our work in ways that are clear, accessible, and inclusive, ensuring no one is left out.

As a not-for-profit organisation, every penny we earn/raise goes straight back into the charity, the communities, and the people we support. Our charity is a a social care chairty and the teams go above and beyond every day to meet increasing demand. At present, they create resources using the tools available to them, but this takes up valuable time. With this funding, we would be able to produce professional, accessible materials that reach a much wider audience, easing pressure on our teams while ensuring our information and support are inclusive for all.

By voting for us, you’re helping us continue to grow, remain accessible, and make a bigger difference for the people and communities who need us most.