Rooms of Our Own want to build a community centre for women, owned by women. Not just the services, but the actual building. And they need your help!

By Wendy Davis, Founding Director of Rooms of Our Own

One of the few revelations to come out of this awful pandemic is the realisation of how much we need to be with each other in a physical space. Of course, the internet is brilliant, and millions of people have been able to contact each other via all kinds of applications on their phones and computers. But OH do we miss the hugs, the body language, the closeness of being physically together.

Rooms of our Own has been trying to build a space for women to come together for some years now. We have lost SO many women’s organisations and buildings that were owned or supported by supposedly benevolent bodies such as local authorities and universities. But when those institutions are in financial trouble then there is no safety net.

So WE need to own the land and buildings. We have been approaching public bodies to allocate a suitable site and to give us time to raise funds. We want to build a centre that will be owned in perpetuity by the women who use it. We have a social enterprise model funded by housing that will allow us to have a brand new, green, accessible building. A number of public bodies have welcomed the idea enthusiastically, but so far nothing has been finalised.

We now want to move onwards and upwards and take a new approach. Now we look at it, isn’t waiting for a public body to agree to sell us a site not so very different from being dependent on public bodies as tenants?

Let’s try DOING IT FOR OURSELVES!

We want to build a brand-new team to raise enough funding to BUY a site. We have a BenCom which is allowed to issue community shares. Maybe if we could find enough subscribers we could raise enough to purchase a site at market rates? Maybe we could find wealthy feminists who would be willing to donate a substantial sum? Maybe we could start a women’s lottery?

The original board members are wanting to step back. We were inspired by the reception for the Women’s Places workshop at the Bradford conference.  We are looking for committed women to create a new energetic board to take the project forward.

Person specification:-

• Female

• Feminist

• Enthusiastic for the idea

• Reliable

• Skills in any of the following:- fundraising, marketing, PR, sales, social media, graphic design, websites, networking, business planning, property, architecture

If this sounds like you, please email roomso4ownATgmail.com.