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MIDDLESBROUGH Environment City

Shopmobility at Middlesbrough Green Hub

Located in the Bus Station in the centre of town, Shopmobility at Middlesbrough Green Hub loaned scooters, manual wheelchairs and walkers to people with mobility needs. This enabled them to do their shopping independently or to use other town centre facilities within catchment area of the scheme.

The Green Hub was an initiative from ourselves to provide a central point in the center of Middlesbrough to offer our various services, information, help and more, as well as a permanent fixture for our ever-popular Eco Shop. Running from Monday to Friday, 10am to 3.30pm (With a half hour closure from 1pm to 1.30pm for lunch), the Green Hub provided a central space for all of our projects, with one project each day hosting the Green Hub, including an Eco Shop on Wednesday.

Location

The Green Hub was located within the unit that housed the Middlesbrough Cycle Centre:

4 Middlesbrough Bus Station, Middlesbrough, TS1 5EA (entrance opposite the Hill Street Centre)

Communities Growing Together aims to bring communities together, building social cohesion and resilience, supporting healthier lifestyles and creating sustainable change through community action.

The project, co-ordinated by veteran staff member David Scriven, takes part in various community activities, as well as co-ordinating several community activities, and has already teamed up with a number of local organisations including All Year Round The Flower Patch, Staying Put Agency and Regeneration of Communities (based at Saltersgill Allotments).

Various events are held regularly throughout the month at scheduled intervals including cooking sessions, volunteer days, Community Action Days, tool workshops and more. In doing so, the project has already received plenty of positive feedback from participants and volunteers.

Those wishing to get involved should not hesitate to e-mail David.Scriven@menvcity.org.uk to join
the CGT mailing list to receive up-to-date details on events and more as they arrive.

The aim of the project, Community Actions (CA), was to build healthy, resilient lifestyles, as well as self reliance and social cohesion within disadvantaged and less resilient communities of Middlesbrough, using a whole system approach to sustainable living. This was be achieved through a programme of support using the One Planet Living sustainability principles as a tool to help local people deliver community led actions to address poverty and improve communal spaces by realising and building upon their community assets.

There were be two key elements of the project:

1. Empowering people so they are able to use their knowledge, skills and lived experiences to improve their own lives and the lives of others.

This was achieved through a community developed network of support, activities and training and a peer to peer early intervention model to help people experiencing challenging issues, such as isolation, poor physical and mental health or food and fuel poverty, signposting them to additional support. An active support network of volunteers, residents and stakeholders was developed, bringing people together within and across communities to build stronger relationships and building social cohesion, more sustainable and resilient communities.

2. It will provide support and resources to community groups to develop their own initiatives or actions which will have a positive impact on the social, environmental and health needs of the community.

This helped to increase people’s sense of investment and involvement in where they live and supporting their community to live more sustainably. This allowed communities to kick start or invigorate existing initiatives, allowing communities to do what they do best; work within their local area and with their peers to deliver effective activities that make a real difference. The actions came from the community and will be owned and delivered by the community. This allowed people to flourish, with communities utilising the assets they had to deliver change that they wanted to see happen.