Henley Resident Association

By Rob Gooding, Community Organiser

This month I have had the pleasure of mentoring the newly formed Henley Residents Association. The group have formed due to the old group dissolving last month. Since then, they have organised proactive community members who want to pick up the gauntlet of supporting their local community.

The HRA plan is to reignite the community spirit through activities to improve their neighbourhood by hosting coffee mornings with board games, weekly bingo at community centre and garden projects for those who want to leave their mark on the community centre garden on Oates close. The group also want to be able to put on away days for the residents like the good old days.

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Swinton Mobile Farm Visit

Rotherfed worked with Councillor Wyatt, Councillor Sansome and Brookfield Junior Academy in Swinton to fund a Mobile Farm Visit, which was provided by Ian’s Mobile Farm (www.iansfarm.com). The aim was to provide a fun activity in what has been a difficult year for the pupils.

Lauren Moore, the Inclusion Manager at the school said ‘I just wanted to write to say a huge thank you on behalf of the whole Brookfield Junior Academy family – staff, pupils and their families for funding the mobile farm visit. The mobile farm visit yesterday and was a huge success. Thank you for making happy memories and experiences for our pupils.’

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Rotherham Federation Covid-19 Response

RotherFed have been part of the overall community support programme targeting those most in need in our communities, initially through the Rotherham Heroes campaign and Community Hub, but also through providing support to our network of TARA’s and community groups. Our CEO has been involved in the multi-agency response and the Rotherham Tactical Group that work together to respond to community needs. As part of our involvement in the Rotherham Heroes campaign, we took a lead role in helping to shape and organise Friendship Calls to the most isolated and lonely people across the borough, culminating in the creation of a Befriending Providers Network that is Chaired by our CEO and meet monthly to improve outcomes for local people who are lonely and isolated.

Read our full Covid Response below:

Dinnington SEND Group

By Ian Huddleston, Community Organiser

Dinnington SEND group are a group for young people who are very active in the community, providing support for many families in and around Dinnington. I met with Jo from the group in early March to look at ways in which we could work together and to try organising events for their young people.

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Ferham Community Group

By Dan Barron, Community Organiser

Since May, I had been supporting Kadeer, who is a community leader from Ferham to engage with the community both physical and virtually. Initially, Kadeer was looking to create a constituted group. We were able to support Kadeer in understanding what was needed and searching for others who wanted to join over several weeks. This included several organisational structures as Kadeer’s daughter was also considering becoming a Community Interest Company. I was able to advise Kadeer about the current COVID guidelines regarding activities, when he was very actively coordinating litter picks within the area.

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A Reason to Like Mondays Group

By Dan Barron, Community Organiser

I have been lucky enough to be able to support the A Reason to Like Mondays (ARTLM) throughout the pandemic with several activities. The group are based in East Dene, St James Church room and they offer help, support and advice to parents and full-time carers of children pre-birth to 18. The group offer somewhere for people to go once their children are at school or if they are a full-time mum. St James Church offers a place where they can relax, have a chat or even a rant about what is going on in their life. Since COVID19 restrictions were implemented in May, the group have consistently provided a virtual coffee morning, which have totalled 21 sessions to date. The group have adapted to the pandemic and continued to engage with their group members via online coffee mornings. The virtual coffee morning is averagely attended by 3-5 members every Monday morning via zoom and the online Facebook page has 65 members who it is supporting.

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Dinnington Coronavirus Community Action Group

By Ian Huddleston, Community Organiser

In March, the country went into lockdown due to coronavirus pandemic. This put a lot of strain on the local community of Dinnington and left a lot of residents lonely and isolated. A group of residents put out Facebook posts to assemble a team of people who could work together as a committee to try and tackle these issues to help those residents most in need.

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East Herringthorpe Friends of Green Spaces

By Rob, Gooding, Community Organiser

Led by Natalie from the East Herringthorpe Litter pickers, the group has brought together members from other East Herringthorpe groups such as the cemetery clean up and the local history group. The aim is to create a large group focused around improving green spaces in East Herringthorpe. The group already has around 18 residents involved with them and is hoping to grow this over the next year. Natalie said: “I was tired of looking out of my flat at rubbish in my neighbourhood so decided to do something about it.”

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Mowbray Musers

By Dan Barron, Community Organiser

The Mowbray Musers are initially started as an in-person group in the Mowbray Gardens Library in February 2020. The aim was to form a group of friends would all sit and talk about creative writing, play some literature games, and show off their works in progress to friends for feedback. To allow people the opportunity to write in-between meetings, they planned to hold their meets, fortnightly at 12 noon on the first and third Tuesday of each month. The group were able to hold just two, in person meetings before the country went into lockdown.

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