THE RIDGE SCIO 

Contribution to the costs of the redevelopment of Black Bull Close in Dunbar into a multi-purpose community facility offering support for a range of beneficiaries. Keywords: town centre, heritage, ....more

Contribution to the costs of the redevelopment of Black Bull Close in Dunbar into a multi-purpose community facility offering support for a range of beneficiaries. Keywords: town centre, heritage, regeneration, capital project, community ownership

Unrestricted donation from the Fountainhall Fund

To support the development of a skills training centre in the centre of Dunbar

To fund work with pupils from Dunbar Primary School and a local artist who will study plants and flowers in the community garden with the aim of producing a booklet for community use.

Donation from The Fountainhall Fund

Black Bull Close Regeneration - North Side

Donation from the Stuart Cormack Memorial Trust

Restoration of a building for a charity supporting disadvantaged young people in East Loathian Scotland

Regeneration completion of north side, Black Bull Close

This is an unrestricted donation from the Fountainhall Trust.

To help fund restoration of 18th Century buildings off Dunbar High Street called the Black Bull Close Buildings.

To contribute to the costs of protective clothing, a gas stove, cups, a polytunnel, seeds and water mains connection for volunteers to work in community gardening projects in East Lothian.

To fund the provision of premises rental, ingredients, equipment and an instructor for the charity?s ?Cooking for Life? classes, benefitting vulnerable and/or isolated members of the community.

to contribute towards delivering counselling sessions.

COVID-19 The Ridge SCIO

Detailed description not provided.

To pay for additional hours for gardeners to support the upkeep of the Backlands Garden in Dunbar for twelve weeks.

Donation from the Fountainhall Trust - unrestricted.

We are seeking funding to pilot a drop-in service in Dunbar that will provide a comprehensive "Income Advice Service" for the community, in particular those struggling to navigate the newly ....more

We are seeking funding to pilot a drop-in service in Dunbar that will provide a comprehensive "Income Advice Service" for the community, in particular those struggling to navigate the newly overhauled benefit system with its intensified conditionality and sanctioning regime. We anticipate approx. 30 individuals per month. Our worker will be able to offer support and advice on a wide variety of issues including: • Challenging benefit decisions and providing appeal representation • Providing benefit checks • Income maximisation checks • Completing benefit forms • Assisting individuals to make benefit claims. • Advising on training opportunities within the Ridge and partner organisations • Assisting with digital skills through our digital champion We shall provide a drop-in service (day TBC) at our local library/community centre/medical centre with home visits available on request and subject to availability. The Ridge is very much trusted within the local community and has a proven track record in providing (excellent) support for our clients. Our local knowledge gives us a unique and privileged insight into the lives of the people we work with allowing us to provide independent, tailored support for each individual. It is through our many services and working partnerships with CAB and DWP that we know there is an overwhelming demand for this service. Our Support Team– already over-stretched and beyond capacity are often having to divert energy, time and focus from the needs of other clients to help people who are feeling stressed and insecure – vulnerable to even the tiniest changes in income. Given our grassroots approach that we are known and respected for in Dunbar, we want to bolt this service onto our existing provision and use our solid base to leverage the strong local community trust we enjoy. Providing this hyper-local, flexible approach will break down barriers and reduce the stigmas associated with accessing the benefit system and asking for help to ensure fair treatment by it. The CAB provision that has been in place locally was intermittent at best and is no longer available. The DWP provide a weekly drop in service but are time pressured and not in a position to provide the sort of tailored 1:1 support required and in fact already rely on us to step in here. This is an untenable situation and we need to formalise this offering. Provision of this service within the Medical Centre as well as the Community Centre and Library is both innovative and creative. For many people who are subject to the mercy of the welfare system or facing in-work poverty the detrimental impact on their health and wellbeing leads them time and time again to the GP and whilst GPs clearly have a duty of care here this is not their area of expertise. We can provide direct help and support to those who need it and alleviate pressures on our primary care services. The instability of having no income is punishing. People are living on a cliff edge daily as they make brutal choices between eating and paying for heating. At the Ridge we can offer solidarity, advice and signposting to other services either internally within The Ridge – • Budgeting – Cooking – Nutrition • Essential Digital Skills • Employability Skills • Volunteering for Health and Wellbeing • Opportunities for paid employment within The Ridge Foundations CIC Or we can signpost externally if further support is required that we cannot provide. This benefits system as it stands is failing people because it was never built to help them but at the Ridge, we are built not only to help people with the long and complicated benefits process, but to help move them FROM DEPENDENCY TO CONTRIBUTION. Our worker will be someone who is fully aware of The Ridge and its social ethos and the wrap around support that it can provide so the process of signposting to further services will be a shorter and more personal journey. Dunbar is the fastest growing down in the country and although it does not score 'highly' on SIMD ratings as a community we suffer from the effects of rural isolation. The west end of the county with its larger (for now) population attracts a greater amount of funding that supports provision and services such as we are looking to pilot here. Our clients with their limited financial capability and sometimes chaotic lifestyles are in no position to make the two hour two bus journey trek across the county to ask help from someone unfamiliar with their personal situation. Our services users require accessibility, consistency, hyper local and familiar help. We can offer this and more as we strive to move people on from the aspirational limiting environment of the benefit system to enjoying a secure and meaningful role within their local community.

This group will carry out a feasibility study to investigate demand in the community for youth work, related activities and a space for young people in Dunbar.

We want to offer a daily drop-in service in the Backlands, with staff available to support gardening activities as well as advice/support.

Detailed information not yet available.

The Plenty Project has been an enormous success to date, with even greater reach and impact than envisaged. It has become an absolutely vital and relied-upon part of our local community's landscape, ....more

The Plenty Project has been an enormous success to date, with even greater reach and impact than envisaged. It has become an absolutely vital and relied-upon part of our local community's landscape, in supporting and improving the health/wellbeing of individuals and families. In particular, it has helped to address local inequalities of access to the opportunities, knowledge and skills necessary to thrive. We want to further embed this provision, to build on what we have learned, to hone our offering further to ensure we reach even more of the people who really need this wide-ranging service, and to consolidate the fantastic progress made to date. It is already recognised, valued and depended upon by a wide range of partner service providers, who have come to rely on this provision for their service users, and we want this year to further consolidate the understanding that this sort of provision is absolutely vital locally. At the end of the year, we want these partners to be fully behind our efforts to ensure the service continues thereafter Another year will allow us to develop further our efforts to widen financial support for the Plenty Project, to ensure that it is able to continue. Demonstrating its value further to eg schools will encourage them to seek to find funds to pay for continued provision. In this way, we seek to ensure the continuing beneficial impact of the Plenty Project in mitigating the effects of welfare reform, combating poverty and inequality, promoting social inclusion and having a preventative impact in our community. We are working right across age groups, from the youngest to the oldest members, and expect to see the impact of our work have a strong positive ripple effect, as children locally grow up having had the opportunity to try different foods, to learn about nutrition and to make delicious meals from scratch. This will impact their own health and wellbeing, and that of generations to come. The positive impacts already evident from reduction in social isolation and improved inclusivity will also continue to be felt. Relationships have been and will continue to be formed across very disparate parts of the local community, where eyes have been opened to the extent of deprivation and genuine suffering locally. In addressing our local Area Partnership about the Plenty Project, we referred to some of the issues faced by our clients/volunteers, including heroin addiction, prostitution and child abuse, and one individual lying in a diabetic coma for 3 days un-missed because he had no friends or family, and no involvement in any community groups. Members of the committee were incredulous that such lives were being lived under their noses, and we have seen a marked increase in levels of support for our work as a result of this, including attendance at community meals and involvement in hosting the Xmas lunch. This is a very important part of building a more equal society at a local level, removing stigma and reducing the tendency towards ghetto-isation, which is so damaging to all. The Plenty Project is a vibrant and flexible response to the needs of the local community, with outstanding results and reach. We want to ensure that it can continue into the future, and see this as a vital opportunity to further prove its worth, to build and consolidate support, exploring the potential for shared delivery and eliciting commitment to financial support where possible/appropriate from partner agencies.

We will be able to deliver more of what we have already achieved, but with improved capacity to bring it to the people who need it most It will allow us to better exploit relationships already ....more

We will be able to deliver more of what we have already achieved, but with improved capacity to bring it to the people who need it most It will allow us to better exploit relationships already nurtured by the Plenty Project to date, to maximise the impact of our work, by reaching those already identified by these agencies as needing support. In addition to continuing the format already on offer, offering 4 x 5-week courses based at the Bleachingfield Community Centre, we will be able to bring training and other supports specifically to families and young people, via agencies working specifically with them, including schools. We will be able to address the specific barriers identified by some of those who wanted to engage but were unable to - in particular childcare (we will offer at least 2 courses including a creche) and issues with getting to the community centre at the time offered (we will take our course out 'on the road', using either the facilities available on site or bringing our own basic cooking facilities with us. We will purchase basic table top hobs and any other equipment required to facilitate delivery where it is needed. We will be able to continue development of the supplementary aspects of our project - yoga, creative writing and Sunny Soups, which we see as a vital aspect of the success of the project. We are conscious of the need to take a holistic approach to the complexity of issues faced by our clientele. Managing physical and mental wellbeing is extremely important, with observable impact on the ability to engage successfully with other inputs which seek to support individuals in bringing order and dignity to their own lives. We want to offer a range of options to boost health and wellbeing, social engagement and confidence. From our experience to date, the fuller and more varied the engagement of an individual, the more likely they are to be able to really make lasting changes in their lives. We do not believe in quick fixes, and would like to offer these additional classes/courses on an open/rolling basis throughout the year, to avoid people feeling they have been 'processed' and fallen off our radar of engagement. Further engagement and the opportunity to put something back and access ongoing social interaction will be provided by Sunny Soup volunteer sessions. This will give us the best chance of helping people to really achieve lasting and transformational change in their lives.

The Ridge Cafe will offer training for 24 local people facing food poverty, to feed themselves and their families with nutritious/appetising food within limited budgets. This will involve 5x weekly ....more

The Ridge Cafe will offer training for 24 local people facing food poverty, to feed themselves and their families with nutritious/appetising food within limited budgets. This will involve 5x weekly sessions for 4 people (x8 groups over 30 weeks), with training in: • Nutrition • Budgeting • Cooking Groups with different needs (eg pregnant mothers, parents of babies/young families, those living in hostels, those caring for elderly) will receive support specific to those needs. People will have a chance to learn to cook appetising, nutritious meals, using free/low cost locally available food. We will bring together local food businesses (in addition to those already involved) and growing projects to provide free food, to supplement food bank resources. We will provide additional volunteering opportunities in our cafe and at community meals, to help combat social isolation/to create local/cross-generational connections, and to encourage dignity – it is not about handouts. We will tackle social isolation by extending provision of community meals, moving around local venues to encourage wider uptake. Participants will be encouraged to take a stake in running the programme, to ensure it offers what is needed/wanted locally, and to give it the best chance of enduring beyond the grant period. Peer training will be developed, improving social and work skills, improving self esteem/confidence. The current welfare cuts have left many local people struggling to feed themselves and their families on totally inadequate income. What we propose is a creative alternative support system, where people develop skills (including from each other) to get the most out of what is available locally, to help each other out and to gain satisfaction from focusing on their health and on contributing to local environmental benefit, rather than feeling overwhelmed by their powerlessness and having to rely on handouts.