This has now finished with the total money being spent one week past the end of March. The total spend of vouchers is for £18,875 and we have helped 271 people.
We now have a poster advertising all the warm spaces including meals and drinks on the town noticeboards. The Baptist Church no longer offer a community lunch on a Saturday as they were only doing it during the winter.
We had a very successful volunteer day on 23rd March with approximately 25 people attending and out of that we now have a regular group of volunteers. Ryde School students continue to be a great asset on Thursday afternoons. We are still waiting on a gardener being employed by Aspire.
We have a successful meeting with the FLOs with a visit from a member of the Barnardos Community Early Help team. SNG (formerly Sovereign) funding is now in place with matching RTC Community Development funds for family cookery sessions. Four Seasons Academy is now doing courses in the schools taking it in turns with each one and has just completed a session at Binstead Primary.
This meeting continues to be useful to Ryde community groups. At our last few meetings we have had updates from various groups including Pop Up Soup Kitchen, Ryde Police team and The Foyer.
- Community Housing crisis meeting
We have recently had a presentation from John Prickett, IOW Community led Housing officer at a meeting attended by RTC Councillors and other community representatives. From this meeting, the RTC Planning Officer is looking to work with local developers on the possibility of funding some properties so they will be affordable. Men Only are working on a separate community led housing project which I have been supporting.
We have produced a Homelessness flyer to be distributed throughout Ryde to include the library, charity groups, and possibly some businesses. This flyer gives information on support available from IOW Council (information taken from their website) as well as local charities such as the Veterans Hotel, Aspire, Men Only and Citizens Advice.
What is Timebanking? ‘Timebanking’ is a way for people to help each other. Members spend time sharing hobbies, skills and knowledge and earn credits in
return. These can then be ‘spent’ on themselves or donated to a community pot to help others. There is no money involved.
This will launch at the Town Meeting on 30th May. We have the rydetimebank.co.uk domain name and are setting up a website. Having presented it at the Community Forum, there was a lot of positive feedback from community groups to be ‘organisational members’.
Once it has been launched, we will market it to other groups, local businesses, residential homes (for example). We will be at the weekly Tuesday Living Well coffee morning for people to speak about timebanking and help people get online where necessary.
We are funding an Age UK digital Inclusion 6-week course that will run at Ryde Library on a Thursday. They will include a session on accessing the Timebanking website. The Age UK digital volunteer with the website and help people where he can.
Timebanking
Riboleau Community Gardens Networking day