From TDC's Sue Sayers

Ruth has run the Winter Warmers Reminiscing Group for many years now and it offers a friendly once a month meeting for older people where everyone is encouraged to talk about their memories and  listen to each other. She encourages every member to take a small part in helping the meetings to run smoothly.

Each year she makes funding applications to ensure the group can continue to meet and take outings together alongside their monthly meetings and has built up trusted relationships with her funders,

During Covid when they were unable to meet Ruth made regular telephone contact with all her members checking on their welfare and cascading useful information. She made sure the group was Covid safe once they were allowed to meet again and supported less confidant members to return.

She is a very kind and caring member of her community and deserves to be recognised for her voluntary work.

From TDC's Emma Reeves

Despite lockdown, and everything else, Peter and Michael continued to make sure that the community garden they look after remained open and accessible. Albion Garden is a little oasis in the Tarner area and was used by many different beneficiaries during lockdown including the residents of the extra care scheme next door. The garden has developed more and they have had more people come and volunteer.

They use Facebook to share uplifting photos and organised a community garden trail. At the same time they have been working hard to restore the community rooms at Thornsdale high rise, which they are now calling the Albion Hub. These rooms have been closed for years and they continue to work with BHCC, local community groups and residents to try and get them functioning. This has enabled the Phoenix Food Project to have somewhere to store their dried goods. They are setting up a cycle repair project and are working with the council to upgrade the kitchen and improve the rooms in general.

They each volunteer on average 30 hours a week towards these two amazing community spaces – the garden and the Albion Hub.They have surveyed residents, sent out newsletters, engaged with the liveable neighbourhoods project and so much more.

These guys work so hard for their community, they are the community champions of their area.

From TDC's Caroline Vitta

Lauran is regularly keen to get involved in her community and has taken part in numerous opportunities with us in TDC. In December 2020 she got involved with our Youth Social Action Project and through this supported the Give Street Project donation day in Hanover where she helped with taking donations form the public and took a lead in getting them sorted in bags. She is also getting involved with a similar day at the 67 centre in October.

Lauran took part in the Be the Change Young Leaders course in the summer and helped write a Youth Led Grants bid to help get some money to help other young people put their social action project ideas into practice.

She has also helped with several consultation sessions to give feedback on how to improve services for others – these include the library consultation, feedback on health services and our own Brighton Streets evaluation.

She also helps out at the Crew Club and often supports community events in Whitehawk and is enthusiastic about giving support to her community where she can.

From TDC's Amy Allison

Emma lives in Mile Oak and during lock down noticed that the local primary school had started to run a food bank. The teachers were trying to run the food bank as well as their classes and were struggling to run it efficiently.

Emma volunteered and started giving out and delivering food parcels to 20+ families across Mile Oak and North Portslade. As well as getting a FareShare delivery Emma tried to supplement the food by adding food from Olio and other food banks that had surplus. Emma was aware that many families needed to access affordable food in Mile Oak (the nearest shopping areas are a bus ride/drive away) so she jumped at the chance to start BrightStore, an affordable food project, in Mile Oak.

Emma helped to recruit several other volunteers and has been the lead volunteer since BrightStore Mile Oak launched in June. There have been 60+ families that have accessed the project.

From TDC's Anke Thurm

Jane has been active in her community for years and years – running her local tenant and residents’ association in East Moulsecoomb, connecting her community members and neighbours with each other and working with local groups and services.

Since the start of the pandemic, she has gone from collecting donations for the local foodbank to starting a whole new food project with other local residents. She has really upped her involvement in the community to organise and help make Moulsecoomb Community Market one of the most successful, forward-thinking food projects in the area ensuring that more than 60 household have access to low cost food. She has also taken an interest in St George’s Hall, which thanks to her and her husband Andy, has gotten a new coat of paint, a nicer garden with repaired benches and an exciting and successful summer fair right after lockdown this summer to help bring people together again.

She has more plans for St George’s Hall and Moulsecoomb Community Market, ideas for connecting people and places and services and I am in awe of her energy, excitement and commitment to the community in Moulsecoomb. Jane is a force to be reckoned with!