Thank you to everyone who pledged their support, helping us reach our Crowdfund London target for our new community kitchen. We wanted to update you with our news, as a lot has happened since we reached the target. We have now completed the project’s administrative matters with GLA.
You may have noticed that GoCardless started collecting your pledges in the last couple of weeks. The Old Bath Community House had been squatted since the beginning of April this year and the Council finally took control of the building at the end of September.
In the next few weeks, they will dispose of all items in the building to enable the contractors to begin work. A new survey will be conducted to prepare for a new schedule of works, as the squatters caused extensive damage, which is likely to increase costs. The Council aims to start works at the site this month, and is estimated to take about 20 weeks. We will start work on the kitchen once this work is complete.
The building had housed the An Viet Foundations filings and records and a post graduation resource library on South East Asia. It contained an archive and historical records of the Vietnamese refugees arriving to Hackney in the 1980’s.
Most unfortunately, the squatters threw most of these unique documents onto the roof and several of them are soaked and destroyed. Volunteers have tirelessly helped us to retrieve this irreplaceable archive from the roof, and they have also helped us box and remove the An Viet Foundation library of books for storage. We have now sought support from the University of East London to restore these precious documents.
We hope to save some or most of them, and we will update you in the coming weeks on our progress.
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Website: www.hackneychinese.org.uk