CETMA Swansea serves hundreds of people in need every month but now that support is at risk
Elian Williams, project coordinator at CETMA, said the organisation is struggling due to a rise in costs and scant funding(Image: CETMA Swansea)
A community resource bank in Swansea that helps people with emergency food packages, free sim cards along with data, and provides digital support services has said that it might have to close by Christmas unless more funding is secured. It comes as a number of businesses have already shut their doors in the city in 2025.
In August this year the owners of a popular shop in Swansea, Uplands Emporium, announced that they made a “difficult decision” to close their doors for the last time.
This spate of closures has been seen in other parts of Swansea as well with the Humble Deli in Killay shutting down merely five months after it opened.
CETMA (Community Engagement, Technology, Media, and Arts) Swansea opened in 2022 and has only seen the number of people it supports grow over the three years it has been in operation. Never miss a Swansea story by signing up to our newsletter here.
“We can provide people with emergency food packs if they’re struggling for food on any particular day and they can’t get to a foodbank until a certain date or don’t have any money until a given date for their benefits,” said Elian Williams, 25, project coordinator at CETMA.
“We can also provide people with clothing and free sim cards with accompanying mobile data for up to a year.
“We’re also part of the Good Things Foundation so we can just generally help people with digital inclusion training if they need help getting online or just general training like using office programmes, job search, or any sort of thing you may need to do online.”
The number of people who get supported by CETMA has risen this year and Elian said the number of people seeking help usually peaks around the summer months of June and July and during the later winter months.
The emergency food packs made available at CETMA Swansea(Image: CETMA Swansea)
In the last two months alone CETMA has given out 40 of its emergency food packs, 15 free sim cards with data, and has provided a warm space at its office to more than 30 people in Swansea.
“You’ll potentially either get people who are on universal credit, personal independence payment, or some other benefit,” Elian said.
“They could have already spent all their money for the given month and just need a food pack until they can get to a foodbank the next day. We have also supported a lot of people who are homeless or in temporary accommodation.”
Elian said poverty is one of the main problems people in Swansea are facing at present.
“I’d be more inclined to say poverty because a lot of the people we have supported have said they have employment but they’re still struggling,” Elian added.
“I feel a lot of it is poverty and the fact that we’re still struggling. Prices for pretty much everything are still so high in comparison to what they were before all of the massive global events that have happened.”
While the organisation does receive the “odd bit” of grant funding and support from partner organisations most of its work is self-funded and the recent rise in costs has had an impact on the organisation’s ability to do its work.
“We’ve gone through our stockpile of the 24-hour emergency food packs and we just do not really have the realistic amount of funding to buy more stuff,” Elian said.
“Between periods of specific grant funding we have had some times where we’ve just like not had stock of food packs up here for weeks at a time potentially and that means we’ve then had to turn people away for food packs.
“As soon as we do have the stocks to give them immediately a lot of it is already accounted for.”
If CETMA Swansea is not able to raise enough funds it would mean that the centre would have to either close its doors or move into a smaller location open just once or twice in the week. This, Elian feared, would leave people in a difficult situation.
“It would potentially put a lot of the community, at least in the city centre region, in a somewhat difficult position. We often have people telling us if not for our support they wouldn’t have been able to have any sort of food that given day.
“We often have other organisations sending people our way because they haven’t been able to support themselves. So I feel without us here it would potentially put those people in even more of a difficult position.”
You can donate to CETMA Swansea’s fundraiser here.
