Supporting 55+ over winter through social activity

The Inspired Taskforce support our older neighbours all year round and as we approach winter, where more support is needed, we struggle to break that financial barrier that prevents us supporting the older community in our usual fashion!

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How does our project support your local older neighbour?___________________________________________________________

Our support helps improve social wellbeing, mental and physical health improvements and create long lasting friendships and meaningful bonds between older peers. These goals are achieved through a series of activities throughout the week at a local community hub that is easily accessed through public transportation.

The Exercise class, our bread and butter, supports our local older residents through physical chair based exercise which improves mobility, socially connects those with feelings of isolation and increases fitness to enable later life independence.
We run our Exercise class twice a week, on Tuesday and Thursday from 10am - 11.30am and starts with a nice warm cuppa before an hour long exercise class! 

In a week we support up to 50 people looking to improve their fitness levels, be it due to lack of physical health or from recovery of physical injury - our chair based exercise is gentle, effective and lots of fun! 

We also provide Social Leisure clubs, Eating groups, Film viewings, Book Clubs, Mindfulness sessions, Musical Workshops, Awareness training, Digital Classes, Creative and Art Workshops, we run these sessions 6 out of 7 days of the week! (The only day we don't operate on is Saturdays!)
Seeing over 100 people per week leaving with a smile on their faces!

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Why are we Crowdfunding?
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Winter is a difficult time for everyone, the heat goes on to keep us warm, costs are increasing for your daily essentials and it becomes a more lonely and isolated time.

For the majority of older people these pressures double!

 
Many of our older neighbours live alone, and are already tightly pressed to choose between food and heating and options for leaving their home is dependent on weather.

The Inspired Taskforce aim to keep our older neighbours connected, happy and warm over the winter period. Reducing the effects of social isolation and the cost of living crisis, to do this we aim to: 

• Continue our programme of activities over the winter period to enable connectivity and to give a safe, warm space to socialise with friends and peers
  
  
• Continue our Social Club on Monday to reduce the gap between social gatherings (Saturday and Sunday are the loneliest days for older people)
  
  
• Throw a fantastic Christmas Party on the 19th December with small gifts, a 2 course meal and the music stylings of the Artful Codgers and Claire Mooney to get everyone up and dancing!
  
  
• Create a Winter Buddies - Phone a Neighbour programme to keep older people connected through phone, even when they are unable to leave their homes due to illness and weather (Ice and Snow) and whilst we have a short break ourselves as staff over the winter period
  
  
• Transport for Older People who cannot come out of their homes over Winter due to weather conditions (Ice and Snow) to allow them access to social and wellbeing groups
  
  
• Provide additional support and assistance throughout the week over winter to housebound individuals (Shopping, Prescription collections and other small household tasks such as replacing lightbulbs and batteries in fire alarms)

We are asking you, our neighbours, for support - even if this means sharing our video to your family and friends and helping spread the word!

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Why should you support us?
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The Inspired Taskforce is run by a board of 7 local older people living through all of these struggles, with the aim of making the world a better place to live for Older People everywhere! 

Money becomes tighter over winter and more support is needed. We cannot do this alone and this is why we are reaching out to you!
Our end goal is to support all of our local older neighbours (Where possible) and Inspire other communities to do the same.

Whilst we as an organisation cannot personally help an older people who lives very far away nor can we change other local areas to become more age friendly, we can Inspire communities to proactively support their local older neighbours!
Over the years we have done many campaigns to improve our local area in various ways, this in turn helped Inspire other local communities to do better and aim to become a more Age-Friendly neighbourhood:

Grey Graffiti Gang:
The Grey Graffiti Gang was a group of local older people who set out to Graffiti the streets with spray paints like a bunch of rebels! They circled every pothole, broken pavement or uneven path and highlighted them to their local council for repairs all with that hope that it prevents accidents among older residents in the future. A news article was covered by the Manchester evening news, you can find the link HERE: https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/grey-graffiti-gang-hit-streets-11016337

Take a Seat: Working with Age Friendly Manchester and other like minded Organisations the Inspired Taskforce set out to tackle an issue with seating along the main corridor of Levenshulme, Stockport road. Approaching businesses we managed to convince store owners up and down the road to host a "Take a Seat" seat which allowed an older person to sit down and rest for 10 minutes as they make their shopping trips or just wanted a friendly ear to listen! Businesses accepted the older residents with open arms and hosted seats in their shops, from the local Pound shop to a Tesco and ASDA store! (We even manged to get additional benches installed outside at points where they were needed most!)
A news Article was covered by the Manchester Evening news, you can find the link HERE: https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/longsight-take-a-seat-northmoor-17252191

Cab Driver Training for Older People: A trial scheme to help Taxi Drivers understand the needs of older people when travelling with them. The course took place at our main central hub and educated local taxi drivers on the struggles of an older person who uses taxis as public transport. This project was part of the bigger campaign of making Levenshulme an Age Friendly accredited area! A story was covered by the MEN here: https://www.pressreader.com/uk/manchester-evening-news/20181022/281767040203521 

Caught Short:

In response to an older individual who visited Levenshulme and was turned away from using accessible toilets, the Inspired Taskforce set out to ensure that this never happened again!
Approaching local businesses the Inspired Taskforce agreed with businesses owners the use of their toilets, created stickers that notified that the building had this facility and promoted its awareness!

An article was covered by the Whalley Range Community Forum and was published locally through community networks, the article can be read here: https://www.whalleyrange.org/2016/06/levenshulme-50-inspired-peoples-project-sharing-good-practice-dont-get-caught-short/