All Nations Church's GROW Project

All Nations Church are a vibrant, passionate, authentic and fun church in the heart of Oldham. 

Our activities are run from an old mill that the charity bought in 2018. It is a great facility at the heart of 
Oldham Town Centre but is desperately in need of repair to make it compliant with current building 
regulations and accessibility requirements. Being in Oldham Town Centre, the building serves 
communities within and around the town centre such as Higginshaw, St Mary’s, Derker and Alexandra. 

Some of our volunteers and regular attendees live further around the borough including Chadderton, 
Royton, Shaw, Delph, Uppermill, Fitton Hill, Hollinwood, the Coppice and Abbey Hey areas so the 
facilities are accessed by people across the borough. We are multicultural and currently have over 15 
nationalities in our membership – white British, Black British, Nigerians, Zimbabweans, South Africans, 
Congolese, Burkina Faso, Jamaican, Portuguese, Nicaraguan, Iranian, Dutch, Irish, Zambian and Indian 
to name some. We feel this reflects the wider Oldham population, and Oldham’s shared identity of our 
parents came from many distant places. Within this population we have asylum seekers, survivors of 
abuse and trauma, disabled people, the elderly, youth, and children.

Refurbishing the building would increase use by creating multiple rooms for several activities to be 
delivered by different groups at the same time. We wanted to enhance building use and accessibility by 
installing functional stairs, a functional kitchen, disability ramp and lift. 

Our activities respond to the needs represented across Oldham, within our church membership, and 
volunteer base. Challenges include unemployment or poor career progression, access to play and 
support for under five children and general poverty. We provide support through a stay and play group, 
a work club as well as Food and Hygiene Bags of Hope.

Our project theme for 2024-25, GROW, aimed to support refurbishment of our building in order to 
promote sustainability of the charity. It also aimed to promote personal growth and resilience which we 
believe supports community improvement.
Specifically, we aimed to:

1. contribute to refurbishing the building in order to increase capacity to offer more activities such as cook
and Taste events to promote culture and healthy lifestyles. The grant was to help us install two new stairs 
cases in line with current building regulations. We also hoped to install a commercial kitchen by partitioning 
the wall; kitchen equipment was previously bought. The One Oldham Grant was sought to support this 
refurbishment. The lift was previously funded through the one Oldham Fund 2022-23 but not purchased
due to delay in securing a builder. Action Together granted permission for us to combine £14K from the 22-
23 grant with the 2024-25 One Oldham Grant, giving us a One Oldham Medium Grant contribution of £34K 
toward the GROW 2024-25 project. Due to rising costs, it was no longer possible to fund the lift alongside 
two staircases with the required fire boarding. We had agreement from Action Together to remove the lift 
from the project activities under the GROW project so the £34K was committed to installation and fire 
boarding of one staircase, and associated smaller rooms and storage spaces.

2. Provide support and learning for children under 3 years with their parents/ and carers through our stay 
and play group, We Nurture and promoting nutrition and community health through family fun days, See, 
Cook and Taste events, themed around cultural events such as Black History month celebration.

3. Promoting self confidence and resilience through small group social groups and supporting people into 
work or helping them gain career progression through our Work Club

Action:

1. Building Refurbishment
We appointed a builder who provided updated costings. Due to the delay of nearly 6 years from when the 
refurbishment plans were agreed in 2019 to appointing the builders, costs were significantly higher. The 
delay was due to the backlog created in the building industry during the CoViD pandemic which meant
builders had a two-year backlog. The project cost had more than doubled on some aspects. We shared 
the new costings with Action Together and gained agreement to use the grant on a reworked phase one for 
the refurb project.

2. We held a Taste, See and Learn Family Fun Day for Black History month along with family fun days such 
as Winter Wonderland and Community love meal marking Valentine’s Day, serving about 100 families
(200-250 people in total).

3. We bought the required equipment for We Nurture and expanded advertising. The project enabled us 
to recruit a project support administrator/ office manager and building caretaker, both part time.

4. We continue to expand building hire to other groups including HAF holiday club for children, security 
training, Action Together and Public Health Oldham