funding

Tag: funding

Meet our (new) Deputy Director, Jamie Kesten

Jamie isn’t a new member of staff, having joined TWCP back in November 2017 at the very beginning of the project as a Community Organiser, however following TWCP’s continuation funding from the Big Lottery and a review of the organisations needs by TWCP Trustees he is moving into a new role as TWCP’s Deputy Director.

The new role will incorporate five main areas of responsibility:

  1. Strategic oversight of programmes
  2. Strategic oversight of communications
  3. Income generation
  4. Demonstrating social impact
  5. Stakeholder engagement
Jamie is excited about the new role and the additional responsibilities and opportunities that come along with it to help support the organisations growing team and wider strategic journey.
 
I joined TWCP because I was looking for an opportunity to be involved in work that positively impacted real peoples lives, after years spent working in a research environment. Working to support local residents of Thames Ward of all ages, backgrounds and experiences over these last 3 and a bit years has given me just that and I am proud of the meaningful connections TWCP has built with the talented residents of the ward and the incredible events, programmes and opportunities that we have helped make possible over this time. I am excited to continue supporting the great work of local young people, residents and community groups, supported by key local stakeholders, as TWCP solidifies it’s position in the borough as a champion and convenor of the local community as it continues to evolve and grow.
Jamie Kesten, Deputy Director – Thames Ward Community Project

 

Young ARTivists receives £1300 from Thames Talk Fund

Emmanuel Oreyeni, Founder of Young ARTivists, received the great news that his arts-based social justice movement had received 26% of the Thames Talk poll votes, and so secured £1300. Thames Talk, a community engagement platform created by Barking Riverside Limited, directly involves local residents in decisions made for Thames Ward. Participants take part by completing the polls to automatically receive digital ‘coins’ which are then donated in return for real cash rewards for local groups.

What is Young ARTivists?

Young ARTivists (YA) is a new youth-led and arts-based social justice movement for young people in Thames Ward who want to use their talents in art, dance, drama, film, music, and poetry to raise awareness on issues affecting the youth of Thames Ward. YA offers fun and creative ways to elevate the voices of young people and an opportunity to empower them to take action on issues they are passionate about for the benefit of their community.

The project is supported by TWCP and will work closely with the Young Citizen Action Group (YCAG).

The Programme

The funding will support the running of a four-month initial programme to engage the young people in Thames Ward who want to use their artistic talents to raise awareness of, and get their voices heard on, issues they are passionate about, engaging the wider community using their creativity and critical thinking.

The programme will be based on social issues chosen by the young people. Weekly sessions will be run by Emmanuel incorporating a range of different artistic mediums to allow participants to develop their skills together to start building a network of powerful creatives seeking social change.

A final exhibition will be hosted to showcase the work of the young people and to engage the wider community.,

How To Get Involved

If you would like more information about the Young ARTivists programme, please complete the form below.

Sports for Development support via BS4C Covid Response Fund

TWCP have recently been awarded £5,000 from the Covid Response Fund from the Barking Sports for Change Coalition (part of the Model City London initiative supported by the GLA, Laureus Sport and the Nike Foundation) to help support local groups we are working with to achieve their Sports for Development goals. As part of its initial BS4C grant TWCP enabled a number of local groups to engage in introductory workshops with Jason McKoy, a Sports Consultant and founder of Mercurial Sports, who helped introduce the concept of sports for development and offer some constructive ideas on how to incorporate this approach into the work they are doing in the community. 
 
Receiving this Covid response fund allows TWCP to fund a more sustained piece of engagement between Jason and two of the most active groups he engaged with earlier on in the process, Mum’s on a Mission and Creative Wellness (led by local residents Vanessa Raimundo and Khushnood Ahmed respectively). Each organisation has shown real dedication both to the community in which they live and serve as well as to the principles of Sports for Development and their desire to continue to improve their practice and strengthen their organisations to help better support the people of Thames Ward and the wider Barking and Dagenham area and over the coming months Jason will spend more time supporting and guiding each organisation on how to embed Sports for Development principles into their everyday practice. 

Sports for Development is an overused and sometimes misunderstood concept. It is the difference between sport for sporting outcomes such as fitness, competition or enjoyment, for example. Or using the sporting activity not only for these points, but to actively and in a clear and structured way, help develop other aspects of the participants taking part. This can be from raising awareness on a topic to improving training and employment opportunities. One of the biggest challenges for new and developing projects is knowing how to capture and demonstrate the impact of the work being done with the participants taking part. Supporting TWCP and the projects that are developing in the area, will ensure that these projects make the most of the great work they are doing, and can demonstrate this to wider stakeholders. This can help open other avenues to them including funding which can of course help with sustainability. Helping projects understand just how impactful their work is, is something often overlooked and taken for granted. There are so many ‘Sport for Development’ projects that on closer scrutiny are actually just doing ‘sport’, with little actual ‘Development’ work at all.

Jason Mckoy, Mercurial Sports

Photo credit: Mums on a Mission

Adult College of Barking & Dagenham grant funding for new ESOL for Parents Programme

After successful completion of his 12-week programme funded by the L&Q Foundation‘s Place Makers Fund, in which 25 students attended weekly, Pierre Epoh Moudio has been granted £2.5K funding for another ESOL for Parents Programme starting 5th June 2021 from the Adult College of Barking & Dagenham!

Thank you teacher! Thank you for all that you are doing for us with your words and because you show that I am reaching my goals of learning English. Thank you so much for getting me out of my dark hole.

Janet, Student

The new programme

The programme will start on Saturday 5 June 2021 and will end on Saturday 7 August 2021. The lessons will be 2.5 hours once a week over 10 weeks. 

It will be delivered online via Zoom and support will be provided for those who have never used the Zoom meeting platform. All the students will have access to all the resources that will come in different forms i.e audio and pdf files. The programme boasts a variety of methods for learning including discussions, presentations, use of interactive materials, video, and student led projects. 

Students also have a major role to play in the choice of topics covered in the lessons and it will be based on their immediate needs. 

The programme is aimed at parents and carers who are frequently excluded from mainstream ESOL courses due to entrenched inequality and complex needs. The level of the students that the programme is aimed at is elementary.

How To Get Involved

Register via Eventbrite: ESOL for Parents Programme Tickets, Sat 5 Jun 2021 at 09:30 | Eventbrite

Or please complete the form below.

London Sport fund £10K for YCAG – Getting active after lockdown

YCAG received funding from London Sport to have some youth activities delivered to young people,  which would be decided by the young people themselves. The purpose of funding the activities is to get young people active after lockdown ends. 

What have been the key successes of the project so far?

The young people from YCAG (Young Citizen Action Group) designed an online survey to understand their peers experiences of lockdown, their physical activity before/during/after lockdown and what kinds of activities they would like delivered. The feedback from the online survey was tremendous with 700+ students of Riverside School. This will provide a baseline of activity before lockdown and before commencing the project to be able to measure the level of benefit after its delivery.

Following this, YCAG used the results from the online survey to decide which kinds of activities they would like to offer based on what their peers would most like to get involved in. A short video appeal was then produced by them to local community groups asking them in turn to create their own videos to share their offer and raise awareness of the opportunities to get involved in.  Great video submissions were received from local community groups summarising their organisations and the activities they offer and these were shown in form time at Riverside School and voted on by students.

Thereafter, YCAG took the results of the vote and invited the top 4 to a “Dragon’s Den” style interview with them where the young people asked questions to confirm the offer available. These were led by the young people and were received very positively by the community groups involved who offered high praise for the approach in general and for the young people involved.

“It was great to be part of YCAG Dragon’s Den, and brilliant to see young people being put at the head of the table. Those involved were strong minded and came out with amazing and important questions.”

Kayden, Dance Instructor at BDYD, former Riverside School student

"I was very impressed with the young people's resourcefulness. Not only did they survey the needs and preferences of the other students, but also asked pertinent questions to establish whether an activity would be beneficial to them. Very professional throughout the process!"

Nikhil, Surya Wellbeing

"It was very good to see young people on a board, working together to provide enrichment opportunities for their peers, schools and community. Everyone was very welcoming and polite and asked good questions. A great example that when young people come together they can design purposeful and impactful projects."

Lamar, Right Development Foundation

What activities are being funded?

YCAG decided on the following community activities, which will take place at Riverside School:

  • BDYD (Barking & Dagenham Youth Dance) – Dance classes (to take place at Riverside School, 3-4pm once per week Thursdays for Years 7-9).
  • Creative Wellness – Cooking & Healthy Eating Workshops (to take place at Riverside School, 3-5pm once per week day TBC, for Year 7s ONLY, Max 20 students.
  • RDF – Basketball (Thursdays) & Boxing Clubs (Wednesdays) (to take place at Riverside School, 3-4pm once per week, for Years 7-9).
  • Surya Wellbeing – Yoga and Mindfulness (Online, 5-6pm once per week Thursdays for all Years but focused on older year groups with exams and stress from school).

When will the activities start?

Activities will start on the week commencing 10th May, and end on the week commencing 21st June.

Reaching Outwards – April 2021

Big news: on Friday 26th March we heard we’d been successful in securing a further three years of funding from the Lottery.  Our success is a tribute to an incredible amount of hard work and support from residents, partners and local groups over the last three and half years: very much a team effort and evidence of deep collaboration which got us over the line.  It means we have a secure base of core funding on which to work from and this makes all the difference.  We’ve found over the last couple of years that we’ve been able to secure smaller pots of funding for projects and initiate any number of activities, thus having massively raised expectations it’s great to have the resource to manage and activate this increased workload.  Feels good.

Three and a half years ago we began our Reaching Communities programme with the aim of creating a resident-led Community Development Trust (CDT); that seems a long time ago but looking at some of the organisations we know and admire – the Bromley By Bow Centre, Selby Centre, Manor House Community Trust for example – their journey has spanned decades and ours is only just beginning.  Hence the task is not only to facilitate empowerment, connection, organisation and community voice but also to ensure we become a mature social business and are sustainable over the long term.  

Our work, along with everything around us, will be defined by how we build back better as we come out of the pandemic.  The value of community-led action was never in doubt but is needed now more than ever in particular actions that support health and wellbeing, resilience and skills.  Our work with health partners, the British Red Cross and with emerging social enterprises will become ever more important as part of the wider solution to the challenges we face.   

For the future we need to reach out ever more widely to residents and partners and create a participative democratic practice to underpin the partnerships and projects we are involved with.  This means finding ways to ensure what we do is genuinely resident-led and open to everyone who wants to make a contribution.  Having become increasingly established and sustainable ourselves, it also means that our success should be defined by our record in helping others grow, become sustainable, attract and secure funding.  If we get this right this will be a measure of real service to the wider community. There are lots of resident-led projects bubbling up, from ESOL, to arts, sports and health that show the way forward and with the right support will change what was hitherto thought was possible in terms of service delivery and resident-led social business. 

Matthew Scott

TWCP Director

TWCP 3 Year Continuation Funding Granted!

Thames Ward Community Project has been successful in applying for 3-year continuation funding from the Lottery Reaching Communities fund! This critical investment will support us to continue, consolidate and secure our project in the long term.

Our long-term vision is a Charitable Development Trust (CDT) that is financially secure; dependent upon a diverse variety of revenue streams, and sustainable. We envisage establishing a community hub that will provide a place for residents in Thames Ward to socialise, engage with local projects and access services. We also hope to have a lead role in place shaping and developing social businesses with Barking Riverside Limited, an opportunity that will develop local skills and connections.

How we hope to make a difference?

Our approach is transformational because it puts power into the hands of the people. Its about creating a CDT that is functional but most importantly resident-led. This resident-led activity functions through thematic action groups, which has led to new initiatives, emerging social businesses, and increased levels of collaboration.  We want to continue to nurture these ‘wins’ to establish sustainability.

Why is it necessary?

Thames Ward is especially vulnerable to the impact of COVID-19 that has given way to a national health and economic crisis. There is a great need to build resilience and wellbeing. Also, the area is the site for one of the biggest developments in London and the country.  With changes happening at a rapid pace, this is a critical time for residents,  bringing significant opportunities to shape and engage in the future development of their area.

One of the main challenges in Thames Ward and Barking Riverside is that there is little social infrastructure and a lack of space for community activity.  TWCP plays a critical role in providing a connectedness, access to resources, and influence to help the community engage with key stakeholders on their own terms.

TWCP has already shown, opportunities can be taken, new initiatives can take hold and communities can have a real voice, influence and participate in key decisions.

How Thames Ward residents feel?

The residents we work with are very positive about the project, highlighting our unique way of giving ownership back to the people.

Residents are now actively discussing how they can lead the future growth of the area, including via our 4 Growth Summits, work on a Resident Charter and internally via training accessed from Locality, ELBA, London Sport, Model City and many others.

We are excited to continue to reach more of the residents in Thames Ward, who in turn will empower sustainable change in the community!

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