Our community farm is now more popular than ever, with over 60,000 people visiting, volunteering and taking part in outdoor activities each year.

Despite cuts to our funding, we remain committed to keeping the Farm open and free to the whole community; however, our public toilets are showing their age and are desperately in need of refurbishment.

We now have designs in place to completely refurbish our tired old washrooms, creating additional cubicles in modern, accessible toilets, which are family friendly and energy efficient.

What we'll deliver:

• Refurbish both the ladies and gents toilets, adding an additional cubicle to each.
• Turn an old store cupboard in to a new modern toilet for our disabled visitors.

Why it's a great idea:

Merton is a socially diverse borough, with over 160 languages spoken by its 200,000+ residents. It is also a densely populated area, recognised as having high levels of poverty in the East of the borough, where the Farm is based.

For nearly 4 decades, we have provided a free community facility enabling thousands of visitors to get close to animals and nature, learn about gardening and gain a greater understanding of where their food comes from.

In order to carry on doing this, we desperately need to improve and upgrade our facilities - something that will only be possible with the support of the local community.

Steps to get it done:

• We've already been pledged over £30k of our £40k target by corporate partnerships
• Once funding is in place, the refurbishment will take approximately 6 weeks.

Here are just a few of the things we've achieved over the last year:
• We delivered 96 farm tours for schools, nurseries and community groups.
• We provided 43 work experience placements and 2 apprenticeships for youngsters aged 14-21.
• We hosted 20 college students with special educational needs as they worked toward attaining NVQs in animal care.
• We helped 10 volunteers with additional needs to enjoy a safe and supported learning programme.
• We ran our incubator scheme in 30 schools and nurseries, enabling pupils to watch a chick being born.
• We gave affordable riding lessons to 295 local people aged from 8 – 75 years old.
• We provided over 188 hours of animal handling experiences, 300 educational talks and attended 15 events in the local community.