Our Impact 2020- 2021

It’s been my first full year at the Trust, one I didn’t expect and won’t forget.  Every day I’ve been amazed by, and proud of, the courage, commitment and energy of the local community and all our project teams.

I want to say a huge thank you and well done to our staff, trustees, volunteers and to the whole community who have worked so hard day in, day out, with positivity, determination and humour.

Everyone connected to the Trust has pulled together to make sure that our residents have stayed connected to each other and to the support they need.

Many people in our local community have been hard hit by this pandemic.  Many suffer long term health conditions, work in industries badly affected by the lockdowns, live in insecure housing, or work as key workers.

As a Trust we’re on the ground, we’re local and we acted swiftly to bring together volunteers and partners to organise a crisis support hub.   In no time the caring sense of community that we know so well in Southmead grew even stronger.  Storytime and cooking went online. Isolated families received support packs and emergency grants, and hot tasty meals were delivered.  More than a hundred volunteers delivered prescriptions or shopping, and paid doorstep or phone visits to those who were isolated.  We continued all our groups and fitness activities online, made everything free for the first time ever, and achieved an eye watering 8200 visits to our online classes!

We’ve been so proud to support our local NHS primary care teams this year.  In the depths of winter, at the height of lockdown, we opened the Greenway Centre to the first vaccine clinic and since then 27,414 vaccines have been delivered from our Centre.  We know that having the clinics in a much loved community venue increased take up which will have saved lives.

Despite the pandemic, we’ve continued our plans to invest in our centres and develop new projects and services.   New partnerships have been developed with the Wave, Bristol Beacon, Ned Care, Sirona and Raised in Bristol.  We have invested in sparkly new gym kit, completely refurbished one of the units for a new local nursery, and improved disabled access to the Greenway Centre.  In May we celebrated planning permission being granted for our community led housing scheme.

It might sound grand, but here at the Trust we are working on a broad range of challenges from the hyper-local, up to tackling some of the biggest nation-wide challenges in 2021.  Whether that’s how we reduce long term health problems, address the housing, climate or social care crisis, or the impacts of the last year on mental health and wellbeing.

This year we are making mental health, and children and young people our priorities. We’ve been really excited to launch a brand new service linking 8-12 year olds with support and opportunities. We are so proud of the way in which young people have protected their communities and made sacrifices this year, and now is the time to make sure that our local young people can play safely, get involved in sports and community action, and develop skills.  We have lots of exciting plans coming up and are looking forward to working with you all to make these happen!