Cost of Living Community Connector

Aim

To tackle the cost of living crisis and promote community cohesion and a strong sense of belonging in Lyde Green and surrounding area.

About the Charity

Lyde Green Community Association is a neighbourhood-based charity with trustees made up of local residents. The charity was established in April 2017 (Registered Charity number 1172725) and its main purpose is to manage a new community centre for the benefit of the wider community and to support community development.

About the community

Lyde Green is a newly-built neighbourhood on the eastern fringes of Bristol which began in 2014.  When fully completed, it will provide 2800 homes. It is located within the Emersons Green Town Council area and the South Gloucestershire local authority boundary. The neighbourhood includes a wide range of general needs, social housing providers, notably: LiveWest, Brighter Places, Sovereign, Clarion and Elim. 

LGCA exists to provide services to all residents and we have worked closely with the social housing providers since before our formal creation to ensure we develop links with social housing residents and involve them in developing future services. We support a community partnership that meets every quarter and has existed for six years where we table the community’s priorities and work in partnership to resolve issues and develop projects that respond to a community need. 

Why do we want to do this?

We work with the local community to help make Lyde Green a great place to live, work and play. We try to do this by taking an asset based approach to community development: promoting community cohesion, connecting people to each other and services, embedding and strengthening skills, and building capability within the Charity and community to ensure sustainability.

Goals of this project

We want this project to tackle the cost of living crisis and promote community cohesion and a strong sense of belonging in Lyde Green and surrounding area. Our project goals are:

• Act as a catalyst and enabler: 
  • Engage and support community volunteering
  • Host community conversations to identify future opportunities/need
  • Support community members to develop projects
  • Remove barriers - help communities and volunteers to navigate red tape and access funding/support
  • Capacity release - help people to co-organise and facilitate groups 
• Tackle cost of living crisis, employability, and improve wellbeing:
  • Linking to food surplus collections.
  • Signposting to other services/support/pathfinding. 
  • Help community members to access and apply for cost of living related funding/hardship support. 
  • Help community members to access employability support - arrange training/drop-ins, bring services in, promote skills - getting back into work.
  • Promote use of Centre as safe, warm space where people can come together and connect. Increased confidence, sense of worth/value, sense of belonging to Lyde Green - more likely to contribute to making Lyde Green and surrounding area a great place to live, play and work
• Connect and navigate: 
  • Appoint a Community Connector role to spot opportunities and connect people together to build volunteer capacity and/or personal support.
  • Bridge and link to other groups. 
  • Bring in other services to run events/drop-ins (based on identified needs) e.g. Advice Services. 
  • Connect to Housing Association services e.g. Tenancy Sustainment Bring people together, helping people settle in to new neighbourhood – community navigators. 
  • Volunteer coordination.
  • Identify and target residents at risk of exclusion/ vulnerability – using housing connections.
  • Reach people currently unreached - not currently known/making use of existing support and Centre
• Be sustainable:
  • Self-funding - identify future funding and embed knowledge and skills through knowledge transfer. Develop ABCD best practice with LGCA staff, Trustees and community volunteers. Develop fundraising skills - helping community groups access funding and learn how to write bids
  • More consistent support for volunteers and community groups (volunteer coordination and connection.

How will we do this?

• Fund a part time experienced Community Connector for an initial 12 month period.

How will we know it has been successful?

• A sustainable approach to community connecting, navigating and volunteer coordination has been embedded
• Increased number of people volunteering
• Increased number of volunteer hours
• Increased volunteer led activities/events/groups
• Increased community insight (to help identify strengths, connect and bring people together around a theme/project/issue etc, useful when evidencing issues or improvements at Partnership too - and seeking their support)
• Increased community cohesion
• Decreased social isolation - evidence of engagement and listening exercises/social value etc.
• Increased engagement at Partnership. Measure for increased skills/cost of living/employability

Support so far

This project has support in principle from Housing Associations in the Lyde Green area and the full commitment of the Lyde Green Community Association Trustees and staff.

Funding method

Keep what you raise – this project will receive all pledges made