Contact
: Tracy Viner, Fundraiser – The Cathedral Archer Project
Email: tracy.viner@sheffield-cathedral.org.uk
Tel: (0114) 321 2312
The Cathedral Archer Project is the only centre of its kind in the heart of Sheffield. It delivers a high quality service to people from a variety of backgrounds associated with homelessness including rough sleepers, drug and alcohol addicts, women street workers, probation clients, asylum seekers and refugees. With support most will be able to establish secure lifestyles free from drugs and alcohol and the lifestyle that accompanies them.
The project serves in excess of 10,500 hot breakfasts each year, in addition to over 4,000 hot meals and other basic provisions to support the growing number of homeless people in the city. Clients can access a host of services at the centre including education (Art, Numeracy, Literacy, Crafts/Sewing, IT, Women’s Group and a Keep it Safe Group for drug users), laundry services, showers, housing and benefits advice and support, food parcels, health services, telephone and internet access and a postal address for those of no fixed abode. Many of these are offered through partnership work.
Dr Chai Patel
Dr. Chai Patel is the former owner of the Priory Clinic, the world famous centre often seen in the headlines as rehab for celebrities. In this episode of Secret Millionaire, Chai will be going undercover as a doctor, to help people at the opposite end of society. He’ll give away thousands of pounds to those most in need of help and discover a world very different from his own.
Although he trained as a doctor, Chai turned his back on the profession in favour of the boardroom and big business – a decision his father never approved of. Now, putting his skills to use, he goes undercover as a retired GP, which enables him to explore more fully the relationship between poor health and poverty. Chai gets hands on, dressing the leg wounds of Sheffield’s homeless at the Cathedral Archer Project and taking keep fit classes for isolated pensioners who are in one of Sheffield’s poorest estates with the Gleadless Valley Community Forum. He’ll confront his own prejudices when working at Grace Tebbutt House, a hostel that looks after female ex-offenders. Although never charged, Chai was investigated over the ‘cash for peerage’ scandal and knows what it is like to feel judged. He’ll bring some of the techniques he’s seen work at the Priory to help these vulnerable women. In doing all of this he hopes his father would have been proud of his actions and agree with the decision he made in leaving medicine for business. Now Chai can be a philanthropist on a much bigger scale.