About Us

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Jacob's Well Care Centre was founded in 1992 by Stuart & Angela Pottinger. Members of Jacob's Well church and local volunteers helped to collect clothing, bedding and furniture surplus to requirements and  distributed them to those in need. Our First organization was run from a warehouse which was donated free of charge in the middle of Rowner Gosport 

Stuart and Angela first saw the conditions of the Romanian orphanages on the news, it was after seeing this.....they knew they had to help.

At the start of it all, Angela was a preschool manager, and I had my own business, we both decided to give up our jobs, even though we had a house to pay for, and five children to feed.

One of our children, Daniel we adopted age one, is severely disabled and totally blind, so as you can see, this mission was a leap of faith.

This was our first ever trip to Romania, We found a local church group who were going to a town called Zalu in Northwest Transylvania and tagged along. Angela at that time was a preschool manager in Gosport so she used her skills to stay for 10 days in the kindergarten showing the teachers how to play with the toys we had bought and to include the children. 

Stuart used his years of experience in the building trade to fit showers, in an orphanage for handicapped children, they had been showering in awful conditions and could not believe it when they had hot water once we had finished……. bless them!
We came back home forever changed and just knew this would become our life’s work to help these people.We started showing photos in churches, telling of the awful things we had seen, and this led to us collecting aid from local people.
Our five children would tell you stories of house being full of aid and them having no space to sit! 

We setup six or seven village kindergartens (Angela spent over a month in Romania when we set up the kindergartens, working with the teachers and parents)

We built a piggery to help the villages become self-sufficient.

We bought a building and made it into a distribution centre so families could come along and get clothes, food, etc.

Christmas was delivering lorry loads of toys

Handing out Toys and Food, dressed as Santa

We have always believed and still do, that we must be good stewards of what God provides.

It is important to personally make sure the aid gets to where it is supposed to go.

Since 1992 we sent lorry loads of aid to Romania on a regular basis - we have made over 150 Missions to Romania to provide Aid and Help.

All four of Stuart and Angela's children over the years have been on mission trips, and even some of there grandchildren! 

Throughout the 90s, we collected enough aid and raised enough funds to take out to fifteen surrounding villages.

• Supplied psychiatric hospitals and three orphanages.
• Set up a sponsor a family team.
• Set up an Elderly people project
• We opened a Chemist which still runs today.
• We sent approximately six artics per year and a team of volunteers.

In doing this work we started to notice Gosport also needed help and firmly believing that charity starts at home, we also started work here.

More recently our long-standing friendship with Romania kicked back in when the Ukraine invasion struck, we were quickly able to establish contacts who could take us into Ukraine with aid collected from Gosport and the surrounding areas.

We relocated to a larger premises at Toronto Place.

In 2013 we opened our First Food Bank

23rd March 2020 8:30pm

"You must stay at home" Who can forget those infamous words from the former Prime Minister Boris Johnson.

This is the day that the Government instructed the whole of the UK to be locked down.

Being a Christian Charity, this was hard to to hear, but we complied and shut our doors on the 26th of March 2020.....but, that didnt stop us reaching out to the people of Gosport and carrying on our mission.

 Even though our doors where shut we were called into action by the local council, asking us to meet the demand for food for, the public who were either to afraid to go to supermarkets, or ordered to stay home on medical grounds. This saw us purchasing ,making up and delivering food parcels weekly. 

  We had closed our main operations and store, but set up a food distribution within our family bubble, with volunteers on the side lines.
As restrictions where lifted we eventually reopened the foodbank and then the store. 

  We Delivered over 200 food parcels each week to the public. All together we delivered over 4000 parcels of food during the national lockdown 

   During the Pandemic with our Doors shut, we had been building...and when we where able to, we opened the doors to our new Food Bank (The Store Cupboard) 

On Thursday 24th February 2022 Russia Invaded Ukraine - we held an emergency meeting and decided we needed to help. We contacted our Romanian friends - We had 1 Baptist church and 1 Christian children’s summer camp as primary contacts.

Our contacts where already actively supporting hundreds of refugees as they fled across to Sighetu, on the Romanian/Ukraine boarder.

Sighetu was perfectly situated to offer help being only 300 meters from the boarder.

We posted on our Facebook page and invited the evening news to drum up support locally and beyond. Starting with a couple of boxes,.....to being completely over run from floor to ceiling.

We had to close our daily charity operations in order to accommodate the huge influx of aid that was coming in by foot, van and lorry every 10 minutes.

A local garage and Gosport council lent us buildings to store the vast amount, it was a mammoth task, and at times we wondered what we had started.

Sorting through the thousands upon thousands of boxes bags, but we soon had a military style operation set up and over 150 volunteers locally came along to spend their time helping.

Boxes, clothes, first aid, toiletries, medical supplies, bedding, pushchairs etc. 

Our community in a crisis is unlike any other and every single person, group, Doctors, chemist church, charity, Gosport council ,police, fire service, schools, all stepped up and donated funds, or helped us to pack/sort donations and load artics, truly amazing.

All the clothes where ready in white bags with tags on....in English and Translated into Ukraine

Boxes, tagged and ready to go

Transportation Day

Three vans and a trailer (fully loaded) - with 6 Volunteers ready to go

1 Artic ready to be loaded with Aid

Aid Trip 1

Missionaries: Stuart, Paul and 4 Volunteers

Destination: Northern Romania

We set off with three vans and a trailer loaded up with aid.

Myself and my son Paul driving in one van and volunteers in the other vans six of us in total it took three days to arrive at our destination in Romania.

A very emotional trip a we saw first-hand the masses of families fleeing their homes in Ukraine. It was distressing to see the families, woman and children only as the men had all stayed behind.

We did find comfort in the support the Romanians had set up churches, changed into refugee centres with beds in every corner.

Aid Trip 2

Missionaries: Lorraine and Stuart

Destination: Northern Romania and Southern Ukraine

Lorraine and Stuart flew out to meet the artic, which had left a few days before us. We spent our time delivering the aid into the Ukraine villages and network of churches with the Romanians.

Lorraine and I visited both the summer camp and the Baptist church in Romania, which had been transformed into make shift refugee centres. We met and had meals with the Ukraine refugees, listening to their stories were both surreal and heart breaking.

We arrived back in the UK on Saturday 2nd April 2022

Our New Website (jacobswell.charity) was launched

In 2023 may the charity were told by our landlady of 12 years she was selling the building once our tenancy ended in May 2024.

This came out of the blue and was a very nerve-racking time for us, many of you donated to a fund we set up this raised £1,500 thank you so much for all your support whoever donated to this, it means so much to us.

The Asking price was huge and seemed impossible to us.

We thought about fundraising (someone even had the crazy idea of swimming to the isle of wight) but most of us are either to old or to disabled for such a quest, we thought of asking the public for help, but this goes against what we try and do at the charity as we understand more than most the hard times people are facing ,so this option was ruled out, we approached and hassled  any councillors we could find from all political sides ,approached  our local council, even did a press release,  but nobody could offer us solutions only directions of someone else to contact. None of us have any rich friends or families, we thought about the national lottery, but this goes against our ethos.  we exhausted all avenues, even looked at renting other properties none of which suited us either too small too expensive or wrong locations.

We prayed a lot over the months trusting that if God wanted the work to continue, he would find a way were we couldn’t.

Just the thought of moving the 100 or more storage boxes, the foodbank, the furniture literally had us in tears at times .. (I mean we all love a mission ..but that takes the biscuit ! ) 

We tried banks for loans, they didn’t want to know as we are a charity, then by chance one of our Trustees in a moment of clarity or madness suggested we tried a Christian bank he had heard do great things for other Christians called Kingdom Bank, and at the same time another lovely local charity closed and decided to transfer us their remaining funds!

Kingdom Bank told us to make a few adjustments to change our income and they would help us to get a mortgage!  Andrews words to us “You need to own your building to carry on the work you have been doing for Gosport, let’s see if we can help you " finally it felt like someone believed in us.

Sometimes we felt helpless, and that the charity may have to decrease in size, our 12 staff would have to look for new jobs and our lovely volunteers lose their purpose. But with the for-sale signs still up outside and the occasional potential buyers still turning up to look at our building, we persevered jumping through every hoop thrown our way. I now feel like I am some sort of financial deal closing wizard and probably know more than I want to about legal paperwork.

” ALL THINGS WORK TOGETHER FOR THE GOODNESS OF THOSE WHO LOVE GOD, TO THOSE WHO ARE CALLLED ACCORDING TO HIS PURPOSE “ (ROMANS 8V28)"

With the guidance of an amazing solicitor and kingdom Bank we did it!!

On the 19th April 2024 we purchased our own building - We are not going nowhere ……all glory to God 

We would like to thank our loyal customers who have  donated items ,visited and purchased from our shop as this is how we pay our way and can carry on with our Missions.