Estate of mine: Hackney residents take charge in novel volunteering project

All smiles: Meg Hillier (centre left) with the VCH team. Photograph: Max Eckersley

Mother-of-four Helen is one of a group of locals who meet up in a little flat on the New Kingshold Estate every Thursday.

The coffee mornings are part of a project called Our Place, run by Volunteer Centre Hackney (VCH), where members of the community can bounce around ideas and establish their own schemes to improve their area and to help them grow as individuals.

“I’m really proud that I’ve been able to handle everything. My children have been taken from me, and they used to be the only thing I got up for every day. Now I get up for myself,” Helen explains.

“I want to be a positive influence on other mums and say ‘Look, I know you’ve been through shit, but you can fight this’.”

The way she plans to do that is by setting up a discussion group at Our Place and raising awareness in the borough about the realities of mental illness. Helen is open about her own obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), which has not helped her in getting her children back.

“I’m mentally ill but I’m made to feel like a paedophile. I want the government to understand that mental illness doesn’t always mean your kids need to be taken away. There are children out there who are truly at risk but the government is focusing on people like me.

“My illness has not stopped me being a good mum.”

Close-knit: the Our Place group. Photograph: Max Eckersley

Helen was introduced to Our Place by Anthea Phillips, a longstanding member of the group and chair of the parents’ association at nearby Orchard Primary.

Anthea is leading her own scheme, Families United, which organises group activities for parents and their children during school holidays.

“We try to alternate between free and paid activities, because we want to make it affordable for everyone involved. We’ve been to Covent Garden and Brighton. We’ve been to Christmas pantomimes. And we’re off ice-skating this afternoon,” she says.

“The idea is to get families like mine out and about. We’ve been running it for nine months with the support of Priya and Polly, who’ve steered us in the right direction. Sometimes you have an idea and you don’t know how to take that first initial step.”

That’s the point of Our Place – let members of the community come up with ideas, because they know their area better than anyone, and use experienced support workers to teach them how to bring those ideas to life.

“I’m not great with business,” Anthea admits. “I’m on benefits and I’m a mum, so Priya and Polly are helping me through it so we can try to make it sustainable.

“Without the direction of the team here, I’d be stuck in limbo and procrastinating rather than getting out and doing things.”

All of the Our Place volunteers were full of praise for support workers Priya and Polly, but the duo were keen to play down their roles. Instead, both emphasised that the aim of the project is to build long-lasting networks in the community.

It’s a mark of how much the group has achieved over the past three years that they received a visit from local MP Meg Hillier, who spent nearly two hours learning about the people involved in Our Place and the contributions they’ve made.

The women – the group that day was mostly women, but there are men involved too – were incredibly open about the difficulties they’ve overcome and those they are still faced with. Even Hillier revealed how she was inspired by her own mother, the first woman in her family to go to university despite having ten children to look after.

One lady, Keeley Burns, talked movingly about the murder of her son, Charlie. The trainee plumber was just 19 years old when he was stabbed to death in 2014 following a row over a debt.

Not only has Keeley set up an organisation in his name – the Charlie Burns Foundation – she also runs two projects, Postcode Parents and Pen Pals, with the help of Our Place.

Pen Pals gets children at two local schools to write to each other every week.

“They get to know other kids in the area and not just their own school friends,” Keeley says. It is another example of how the people here are creating lasting bonds in the community, and Keeley knows better than anyone how important those relationships can be.

“It has helped me so much to have support from people nearby who’ve been through similar things to what I’ve been through,” she adds.

Simply talking to friends can have such a big impact on people who are otherwise isolated, and that is evident in one of Our Place’s recent successes.

Impressed: Meg Hillier with Brave Women’s Network leader Salome. Photograph: Max Eckersley

Shine, which is now known as the Brave Women’s Network, is a course for women who’ve suffered various forms of abuse.

Salome, who created the project, describes it as a “self-development course to motivate women”.

“I’m passionate about empowering women, and I really want to take this forward and continue supporting the ladies who come along in any way I can,” she says.

“I created a course that is no longer just in my head but has actually come to life. And it is helping women. It gives them the tools to find out who they are, and gives them a purpose and self-worth.”

As well as building community networks, Our Place helps local residents develop personal skills, and many of them have gained the confidence to get back into employment as a result.

For VCH chief Lauren Tobias, Our Place perfectly illustrates the benefits of volunteering. The centre is celebrating its 20th anniversary in 2017, with events planned throughout the year and a social media campaign, ‘We Love Hackney’, in the works.

Lauren said: “There are so many ways for people to give their time. It can be one hour a month or one hour a day – it’s about what you enjoy doing.

“As well as this project, we have hundreds more opportunities. Anyone can use our new online service, Volunteer Connect, which has lots of varied and interesting roles. People can do whatever they want, like the people here.”

That is the beauty of VCH’s approach with Our Place. It’s easy to bandy around buzzwords like ‘skills-sharing’ or ‘ideas workshop’ when describing the concept, but the project is really about people power.

Whether it’s the individuals themselves, the dedicated support workers, or those running the organisations which facilitate projects like this, it is strength in numbers and blossoming friendships that are empowering people in this little corner of Hackney.

Priya gave an example while talking about the Whatsapp group that residents have created to stay in touch: “The other day, someone wrote ‘Look, my kid’s blazer has ripped. I can’t sew and I don’t have the money to get it fixed. I’m going to get in trouble with the school and I’m really stressed’. Because they have this network, someone replied and said ‘Just bring it over and I’ll repair it for you’.

“We’re just trying to build long-lasting relationships which help people realise that they have power, that if they get together, they can make changes and sort out problems.”

For more information about Our Place and the various projects run by Volunteer Centre Hackney, please visit the website here.