A Swansea Vale warehouse that takes brand-new goods businesses cannot sell and gets them to families who cannot afford the basics has won a UK-wide charity award.
Faith in Families collected the Charity Sustainability Award at the Charity Times Awards, held at the London Marriott Hotel Grosvenor Square on Wednesday night. The Royal British Legion and Poppy Scotland won the same category two years ago.
The award is for the charity’s multibank, the project Swansea knows as Cwtch Mawr. It has now been renamed Multibank Cymru.
The idea behind it is simple. Businesses hand over new surplus stock, from clothing and toiletries to baby products, bedding and household goods, and the charity moves it through trusted community organisations to people facing poverty, crisis and hardship.
This month that meant around 35,000 items of school uniform landing in 26 schools across Swansea and Bridgend.
The charity says the award is only possible because of its partners, and it singles out Amazon and Multibank UK. It says they helped supply the infrastructure, expertise and access to surplus goods the model needed to run at scale.
“Behind every single item is a person”: the Multibank Cymru manager on the Swansea Vale warehouse
Jon Waite runs the warehouse. “We see the pallets and the products moving through the warehouse every day, but behind every single item is a person,” he said.
“It could be a child who needs the right clothes for school, a parent trying to stretch the household budget, or somebody facing a crisis who needs a bit of pressure taken away.”
“This is what partnership looks like when it works,” he added. “Businesses provide the goods and expertise, our team creates the infrastructure to move them, and trusted organisations make sure they reach the people who need them.”
Cherrie Bija: “small organisations can create big change”
Cherrie Bija, the charity’s chief executive, called it “an incredibly proud moment for Faith in Families, for Swansea and for Wales”.
“We are a relatively small charity, but we have always believed that small organisations can create big change when the right people come together,” she said.
The trophy follows her own win in May, when she was named Public and Third Sector Director of the Year at the IoD Wales awards.
“To bring this award home to Wales means more than I can put into words,” she said.
From Y Siop at Gower College Swansea to the Dulais Valley: where Multibank Cymru’s goods end up
The charity is putting more of the stock where people already are. That includes Y Siop at Gower College Swansea, where students can pick up essentials in a setting they know.
A growing network of what the charity calls Cwtch Cubbies works as local drop points closer to the communities that need them.
The multibank began pushing beyond Swansea in January with a pilot through five hubs in Port Talbot, the Afan Valley, Neath, the Dulais Valley and Pontardawe.
It opened in 2024, and the charity describes it as Wales’ first multibank. It moved into its expanded Swansea Vale warehouse last summer.
The Charity Times Awards, now in their 27th year, recognise work across the UK charity sector.
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