Projects – VC Hackney

Projects & Partnerships

Our projects enable everyone – people with disabilities or mental health needs, local employees and lone parents – to make a difference and meet life goals. We offer bespoke volunteering opportunities and tailored support to ensure all volunteers have a valuable experience and benefit from positive outcomes like improved wellbeing and steps towards employment.

Health and Wellbeing

We deliver specialised projects supporting people with multiple health needs to meet life goals. Step Up provides long term individualised support to people with mental health needs to volunteer and gain paid employment, to help with their recovery journey. We provide direct volunteering opportunities and support group placements and activities such as gardening, art and exercise, helping to improve wellbeing. Community Supporters volunteers reduce social isolation, by visiting people in their own homes, to enable them to partake in daily activities and rebuild their independence.

Public Health Awareness

During the pandemic, we began a number of projects to support our local communities. The Public Health Community Champions programme continues to support both Covid-19 and wider public health priorities as part of ‘living with Covid’. This is achieved by strengthening partnerships with the Public Health team and supporting organisations and individuals based in City and Hackney to communicate key public health messages amongst personal and professional networks. This also helps feed back community insight to develop the programme which enables us to ensure a more relevant and tailored source of support for City and Hackney’s diverse communities.

Place-Based Social Action

Residents and local communities are supported to come up with their own solutions to local problems – to share their skills and deliver joint activities to tackle local issues. Our Place brings residents together on estates in Hoxton, and New Kingshold to co-produce activities such as gardening, arts and crafts, and a parent-led Stay and Play group. We’ve also launched a new project Together Better, which will see patients supported to build a volunteering community in 9 GP practice areas across the borough.

Steps to Employment

Volunteering is a key step on the route towards paid employment. It provides essential skills and experience to go on CVs’ and application forms. We provide specialist employment advice and support for people with mental health issues through our Step Up project, both to find and sustain paid employment, through employability workshops and long term one to one support. We have helped over 110 people with mental health conditions into paid work since 2015.

Coming to the Volunteer Centre helped me find opportunities I’ve always wanted. Sparing just a few minutes to pop into the centre will give you what you’re looking for
– VOLUNTEER & HACKNEY RESIDENT