Category: Good News Stories

By Vicky Hilton, Community Organiser

The young people at Ferham School came together to organise their own summer fayre this year with the help of our Community Organiser Vicky Hilton.

By Dan Barron, Community Organiser

The Springwell Tenants and Residents Association have now sent out their first newsletter after a lot of hard work and deliberation it appears to have been a successful release for the group.

By Jess Clarke, Project Manager

Over the last month I have been supporting the group Rotherham Sangeet and Choir. This group has been formed since 2014 and Rotherham Federation has supported them throughout their community engagement projects. They are a singing choir working to address social isolation and mental health through music and signing workshops, going into schools, care homes and putting on community events across the Rotherham Borough.

By Ian Huddleston, Community Organiser

From last month, we have now got the committee members together and completed the constitution for the Dinnington boxing community group. They will now get a bank account and start applying for funding asap. The group have lots of other ideas to expand and do other things in the community, so this may only be the beginning for the group in Dinnington.

By Rachel Cole, Projects Officer

Shaftesbury House is a RMBC sheltered housing complex close to Rotherham town centre. It is predominantly for people who are over the age of 50 or have a disability.

Back in May 2016 a couple of residents from Shaftesbury House contacted Rotherham Federation to see if we could help support them to start a group. We helped them write a constitution and open a bank account. The group started with three members and now three years on has over twenty members.

By Ian Huddleston, Community Organiser

Following on from listenings with the young people at JADE, the information back was that they wanted more sports activities to do.

I arranged to meet with David Robinson who has run fitness and boxing sessions previously at a gym, to see if he would like to get involved and run some sessions at JADE with the young people. David is from Dinnington, and all his family are from the area. He talked about the area when he was a child and the community spirit that seems to have been lost, and how he would love to get involved in putting something back into the community.

By Sarah Bingham, Community Organiser

Through listenings carried out in the first year of organising in Rawmarsh and Parkgate, I began to find out what was important to people living there, what issues were affecting them and what change they wanted to see where they lived. It became apparent that a lot of the residents I spoke to were passionate about the area’s green spaces and that there were concerns some of them were under threat, in particular, council-owned Green Hill in Parkgate.

By Louise Johnson, Employment Coach

A new client attended our job club on a Monday and said she has recently been let go from her job as a recruiter due to personal circumstance.

After a loss in her family, she was only allowed 5 days off work for bereavement and so went back to her job as a recruiter but couldn’t handle the pressure and stress she was under. It was a mutual decision between her and her employer to leave the job.

By Penny Thompson, Community Organiser

Following from the success of the Easter Extravaganza and recognising and confirming the skills capacity with the residents who hosted the event. The group has now decided to formalise themselves as a constituted group.

I have supported the group with skills audit, which allowed the group to reflect on their own individual and group skills, such as creative writing which can be utilised for promotional activities as well as writing donation letters to local organisations and companies. This will also be useful for when the group begins to apply for funding. I also recognised the group is very effective at strategical timelines so I have supported and encouraged the group to assess a timeline of the short, medium and long term objectives and how to measure the impacts of the type of activities they would like to deliver.

By Jess Clarke, Project Manager

As a community Organiser I worked in Canklow for 2 years, in this time I supported a team of community leaders and volunteers in forming the community group ‘Canklow Rainbow Kids Club’. In 2018 the group developed and became self sustainable and needed only minimal support from me.

Over the last year the group have found the need in Canklow to be extremely high but with little engagement from other community members. Because of this and personal circumstances /opposing ideas two group members left this group in order to form a new group which focuses on younger children and the older generation. This new group is called ‘Canklow Kidz’.