Wood Street Mission is a children’s charity helping children and families living on a low income in Manchester and Salford.

We provide practical help to help meet children’s day-to-day needs and improve their life chances. Through Family Basics we provide struggling families with children’s clothes, bedding and baby equipment, and toys and books which are important for children’s wellbeing and development.

We promote engagement in education by helping families with the costs of going to school through SmartStart and run holiday Book Clubs to promote reading and improve children’s literacy. We also provide toys for children to have presents on Christmas Day.

We also raise awareness about child poverty through our communications, holding events and giving talks at schools, businesses and groups.

We help thousands of children and their families every year, and all our services are free for families to access on referral.

As an independent charity we rely on our supporters to raise and donate funds and items, and to raise awareness of our work. We have hundreds of volunteers helping us each year, who are essential to our work.

Wood Street Mission was established in 1869 making us 155 years old this year! To learn more about our history supporting local people, read more here, or visit our archive at John Ryland’s Library.

Filmed as part of the ‘Wigan Pier Project’ this short 5 minute video tells you a little about our work today. We also have a You Tube channel where you can find more videos about our work.