New Hope was thankful and appreciative for receiving a substantial grant awarded from The National Lottery Community Fund (NLCF) for an exciting project, ‘Championing A Stronger Community’, in Birmingham in April 2019 for three years. This was made possible by the money raised by National Lottery players. The project focused on the community development and cohesion in terms of language development, career education, family bonding, basic counselling, parenting skills, improving health and wellbeing and personal development of the members of the communities of the inner-city areas of Birmingham.

 

The ethnic minority communities in the different inner-city areas of Birmingham experience multiple deprivations. People suffer from language barriers which prevent them from being integrated into society. The ESOL provision enabled our beneficiaries to develop their English language, helped social integration with other members speaking different languages, improved confidence to communicate in daily life and empowered them to live independent lives. Championing a Stronger Community tackled unemployment in Birmingham, which was one of the most severe issues we highlighted in our proposal and a cause leading to poor lifestyle and poverty in the region. To reduce poverty, our project focussed on career education and development to beneficiaries over 18 years of age, they were taught to gain basic career education and skills development training aiding to find suitable employment and job ready for the labour market.

 

Loneliness is currently a major problem among the elderly people in the community who feel isolation and loneliness which has further exacerbated due to the Covid19 pandemic, because of fear, anxiety, language, and cultural barriers.

The funding received from The National Lotteries Community Fund was highly beneficial during what was a difficult and challenging time.  It allowed New Hope Global to adapt our services to meeting the demands and needs of the community.

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Many organisations stopped working from office base and adopted to working from home, whilst New Hope team continued to serve the communities by supporting our beneficiaries with befriending services to help cope and manage with mental health issues, isolation, distribute food vouchers, visiting food banks on their behalf.  We helped the elderly engage with the volunteers, picked up their prescriptions and delivered medications to them.  Our online Yoga sessions, gardening and outdoor walking sessions supported their mental health and physical health, we promoted how to keep safe during the pandemic, safe hygiene, actively promoted the Covid vaccination programmes, working with medical professionals to overcome fear and anxiety of the vaccine, and ensuring people had the vaccines.  New Hope Global are thankful to the funding for agreeing to continue services beyond the lifetime of the project, this meant we were able to rebuild the community and help the charity restore capacity, resilience and to emphasis on developing lots of new and exciting opportunities for the communities in Birmingham.

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Healthy living remained one of our top priorities in rebuilding the communities. Our project is designed to help the elderly members of the community to improve their mental and physical well-being through workshops and a range of health promotion activities facilitating our beneficiaries to make new friends, improve their communication skills and stay healthy.

 

The project offered parenting skills courses to Bangladeshi and BAME parents who often struggle to raise their children in a Western culture that is different from the one they grew up in. The sessions helped the community members by providing help and tips on raising children which will ensure the success of each individual family.

 

The members of the Bangladeshi and other ethnic minority communities are very much fond of food and drink. Our project engaged the community members in cooking or baking sessions and organised cooking competitions. Participants thoroughly enjoyed participating and winning prizes.