A CHARITY helping disabled people find work hopes a pantomime will provide a ‘happy ever after’ to their bumper year.

The Pathway Workshop in Blackbird Leys,Oxford, provides jobs making handmade furniture to people with physical and learning disabilities.

For the first time in its 20-year history, the charity’s finances look as though they could break even this financial year.

Managing director Mike Kyle said: “We have turned a loss of thousands into almost breaking even now.

“It’s wonderful.

“We are now funding 75 per cent of our overall costs through the workshop itself, and recycling 1,000 tons of timber from landfill.”

The workshop employs 19 people on a working wage and helps them find work.

The furniture they make is sold to the public, schools and companies including Honda and Blenheim Palace.

More than 65 per cent of the people it helps find permanent work and housing.

The charity has now also started teaching independent living and work ethics.

Mr Kyle said: “Our aim is to let people take as long as they need to help them move forward as totally independent people.

“Unfortunately, the current financial climate means finding that last 25 per cent of funding from independent trusts is harder than ever.

“So although we are all working harder and making more, the actual financial position is probably more difficult than it has been in past years.”

The charity costs about £250,000 a year to run.

In 2005, it narrowly escaped closure after securing 11th-hour grants.

Now the charity hopes a unique ‘Impropanto’, where actors stage an improvised pantomime each night, will help line the coffers.

Mr Kyle said: “We did this last year and it was a big success, raising more than £1,500.

“The pantomime they perform is picked at random and then everyone in the audience shouts out suggestions.

“I think we’d like to raise about £3,000.”

The pantomime, Aladdin’s Revenge II, is being performed free-of-charge by the Oxford Comedy Deathmatch, an improvisation group.

Member Jen Sugden said: “It’s great fun.

“None of us know what we’ll be performing until we get there.

“The workshop is such a great charity.”

The pantomime runs from Wednesday to next Friday at 7.30pm at the Unicorn Theatre in Abingdon. Tickets cost £8 or £6 from ocdimprov.com or on the door.

Members of the workshop will also be at the Oxford Christmas Market at Oxford Castle for a week from Sunday.