Community Development Officer report for Full Council on 04 February 2025
The service has been running since 4th November. As of 27th January, the team have seen 211 clients, of which 76 were repeat visits. Over 50% of the visits have been about benefits. A full quarterly report will be given out at Full Council meeting.
We are currently working on a grant application with Awards for All to find the second 6 months funding for the project, using data collected from a survey of residents.
SNG, whilst not able to fund us, are going to support us by looking over the application and researching other funding possibilities. We have confirmed contributions from Nettlestone and Seaview, Wootton, Bembridge and Fishbourne councils towards the costs of the service.
We currently have 49 members of which 12 are organisational members and 113 exchanges of a total of 184.50 hours have taken place. We had a successful Christmas coffee morning, and another planned for February, and we are now using No 11 St Thomas a regular venue.
We continue to present to different organisations, including the Pheonix Project and Aspire. This week we have a team of members going to the Wild at Heart Forest School to help clear the area. We continue to do a drop in on Tuesday mornings in the library alongside the Living Well coffee morning. We had a successful day at the national Timebanking UK training day in November where we were able to network with other Timebanks across the country and get useful tips on different ways to do things
The cookery sessions funded by SNG and South Western Railway (SWR) have been a great success and to date (27th January) 119 people have participated in the sessions. On 24th January, SWR visited the community session held at Network Ryde and conducted interviews for a short film to go on their social media accounts.
Courses have been offered across the community: primary school families, Network Ryde attendees, The Foyer, Fellowship House hostel, the Women’s Refuge, Men Only and a general one open to all residents. The funding will finish at Easter, but we hope to find more funding to continue in the next financial year.
This continues with all volunteers aware of possible redevelopment plans. We continue to have a regular group with a plan for this year to grow more veg. This is now part of the Timebank.
We are continuing meeting with the FLOs every half term. Before Christmas we worked with Salvation Army using No11 as a drop off point for schools to pick up the Christmas food parcels. This half term’s meeting will have Footprint Trust as a speaker to update the FLOs on the support available to families from them.
At our last meeting we had a general update from all groups. Our next meeting will have a speaker from IOW Food Bank giving us an update.
Timebanking
Riboleau Community Gardens
Ryde Information and Support Service at Ryde Library Sherbourne Centre