316 Community
The 316 Community Project has injected over £250,000 into the Community
Introduction
Our vision is to be a blessing in the community, to bring about community integration, be an influence for good and encourage cohesion and well being for all people.
The work is mainly focussed in the inner area of Rochdale, this includes wards showing high levels of deprivation based on the governments index of multi deprivation. The project is located in one of the wards with the worst 5% nationally. The area is characterised by a high concentration of ethnic minorities and almost a quarter of the local population is under 15 years of age.
Root problems in the area are poverty, racism, rejection, unwillingness of a desire to change and two communities living in parallel. The fruits of this are lack of understanding, tension, fear, mistrust, low self esteem, limited employment, drugs, alcohol, vandalism and lack of opportunity.
Projects undertaken to influence change
The creation of a kick about pitch - This was a joint project involving Spotland Community Centre and Rochdale Council at a cost of £98,316 was constructed in February 2002. Since that date ‘The 316 Community Project’ has undertaken sports development training for young people and approximately 4,000 young people played sports in the first twelve months on the site. This was due to the fact that the project had a sessional sports worker that was funded by the Lloyds TSB Foundation.
In 2003 we built on this project by obtaining funding for a small cycle track for 3-11 year olds, at a cost of £10,000 in partnership with Surestart.
Refurbishment of a gym at the Salvation Army hostel in Rochdale. - Again ‘The 316 Community Project’ raised funds to provide equipment and refurbish the gym. Since 2001, volunteers have worked with the homeless and asylum seekers staying at the hostel and the general public going into the gym. The gym is open to anyone free of charge and over 1,000 people used the gym in the first twelve months.
Areas of the Community we work with
Youth Groups – We run youth groups that engage in sports, music, crafts and education.
Schools – We are involved in school assemblies and R.E. lessons with 3 local schools and we help several children who are at risk of exclusion.
Community Stuff – We do detached youth work, cohesion and peace building.
Environment – We keep the kick about pitch clean and maintained, graffiti free and we also encourage our youth group to do litter picks to help the local community’s environment.
All of the above projects have been provided free and at no cost to the community.
Football Foundation £58000
Have given funding to train young people to become football coaches.This a new project 2006 building on the work already done on the kick pitch.
Ongoing Vision
To provide community programmes around all the facilities at our disposal and the links we have with other agencies. For instance, we would like to employ sports’ coaches to work on the kick about pitch to enhance the usefulness of the facility. Linked with this we are developing the skills of the young people we work with to a level where they could obtain relevant qualifications and maybe develop a career.
We would like to obtain funding to ensure the sustainability of existing projects and its employed staff. For example, the Thursday night and Sunday morning youth group has three paid employees plus volunteers working for it which benefits 2,500 persons per annum.
Setting up and development of a youth music project. At the moment we meet on a Tuesday night every fortnight to practice. We would like to extend this by having a dedicated night for youth music on the alternate Tuesday evening. Part funding for this project has already been received for this financial year.
We would like to develop some residential weekends that are educational and fun for the youth that we work with. The first of these went ahead 9th-10th July 2004 and had 27 participants.
We are planning to do some educational sports activity days during the summer.
Obviously all of the above ongoing and new projects will depend on the availability of funding for their sustainability and success.