Shining Lights Centre

Shrublands

Social Action Hub

The Social Action Hub‘s vision is to unite people by organising social action projects and delivering services that make a difference to the local community.

They provide various innovative projects and services to vulnerable adults, families, and children. Supporting the vulnerable through the relief of poverty and support for mental health and wellbeing

They empower communities to become more cohesive, resilient, and sustainable.

Impact

VIY will help, by creating a new usable safe space to run a Forest School, providing young people the opportunity to learn about nature and become more creative through holiday programmes.

The work will open up further opportunities to run classes on the premises enabling them to increase their service users and reduce costs. It will also give the venue some much-needed storage.

Project Contact: Katie Booth, email katie@teamviy.com

Stamford Hill Community Centre

St Aidan’s High School

St Albans Cricket Club

St Ann’s Library Community Garden & Kitchen

As part of the Mayor of London’s Grow Back Greener Fund, VIY partnered with Haringey Council and Edible London for a project at St. Ann’s Library in Tottenham in June 2021. The fund sought to convert grey spaces into green spaces for community use. The aim of the project was to transform the library’s underused garden into a regenerative growing and educational space, aiming to support young people in Tottenham to access green space, nature and to provide positive nutrition messages.

The project:

VIY managed the first phase of the project undertaking the necessary building elements to create the growing space. Over 8 weeks we and our young volunteers:

• cleared the area of vegetation and debris, re-designed the paving work, and prepared the ground for growing food
• built two greenhouses and a range of planters on the cleared spaces, some of which were layered at different heights to allow disabled access or use by children in pushchairs
• converted an old bike shelter into a carpentry station and built a range of seating and a bug hotel

Edible London, a grassroots organisation who work within food poverty and sustainable food growth, then managed the site moving forward.

The young people: 16 young people volunteers referred in from the council’s Youth Justice Service, local youth organisation Loads of Talent and Switchback, who work with young men in the criminal justice system – mentored in demolition, carpentry and employability skills by six VIY Skills Mentors 

The impact:

• 300 square meters of grey space converted in to green space
• Community kitchen created to grow food locally and provide food/cooking education for local people
• Visit from Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, and Mayor of Haringey, Adam Jogee, including subsequent PR & social coverage as part of the Grow Back Greener Fund

Accreditations gained: 10 Entry Level 3 City & Guilds accreditations in Health & Safety and Carpentry

St Basils

St Bede’s Middle School

St Bede’s Middle School took part in VIY’s Mentoring Programme, funded by The Careers & Enterprise Company, in October 2019. The programme was targeted at students in Years 8-11 and designed to develop early awareness of the building and construction sector as a relevant and rewarding career pathway. 100 secondary schools across England participated in the programme since 2017.

The programme typically involved three interactions for students over one term with their VIY Mentors: two introductory skills workshops and then a building project (either in the school or the local community) which is identified and planned by the students. For St Bede’s, the VIY programme also fitted well with their own junior apprenticeship scheme.

15 students from St Bede’s took part in the two employability skills workshops followed by their project in October 2019. The project involved using carpentry skills to create an outdoor classroom, which had been on the students’ wishlist for a long time! With the help of their mentors, the students designed and planned the project during the two workshops. They then used the school’s Design Technology workshop to build all the components of the outdoor classroom (entrance archway, base/platform and benches) before installing them in place in woods that form part of the the school’s grounds.

The project was also supported by the local Wickes store, which provided all of the timber and other materials needed, and a staff member visited the school and volunteered alongside the students and mentors.

St Bernard’s High School

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