North Star welcomes residents of Darlington Housing Association - Find out more
£60,000 to invest in community development
Projects have included helping people with education, employment and training opportunities, digital initiatives and volunteer drivers schemes to tackle rural isolation.
We work closely with Evenwood School…
We partnered with Teesdale YMCA…
One of our primary motivations is to involve our tenants in the development and delivery of our services, and this has formed a huge part of the work we’ve done across Teesdale.
North Star’s continuing investment and commitment to Cockfield has encouraged Teesdale YMCA to invest in Lipscolm Hall, which now houses a community café that offers affordable food to local people. It also provides Sunday lunch to over 40 residents.
The Evenwood Family Support Project has helped the community to establish a number of community groups and activities. Most notably a film club that caters for more 20 children during the winter months and a gardening club that caters for a similar number of children in the summer months.
North Star has helped over 300 people get back into employment through a range of community projects and employment initiatives.
One of our most recent successes comes from Sarah Pybus, a Community Suppport Worker from County Durham. We provided £7,500 to support the Faith in the Community project in the rural neighbourhoods of Evenwood and Cockfield in County Durham. Faith in the Community is a partnership between local housing associations, churhces, One Point, YMCA, Evenwood and Ramshaw Community Association and local schools. The funding has enabled Sarah to lever in almost £30,000 from other sources in the last three years.
With our help, Sarah gained qualifications and obtained a job as a Community Support Worker with the Faith in the Community project.
Sarah Pybus said: “What North Star has been able to give the project is amazing. Thanks to their help I’ve gained qualifications in community development and youth work, and I’m working in a job that I love – I love helping people and families and now I can do that every day. At Faith in the Community we give people opportunities to do things they’d never possibly do, and this wouldn’t be possible without the extra help we receive from North Star.”
Sarah also features in a new national film and study called We Work, which shows how housing associations are helping people into work.
We Work draws together 15 powerful stories, demonstrating how lives have been transformed by housing associations, like North Star, who are part of a network called PlaceShapers.
Placeshapers are a network of more than 100 community focused housing associations who own and manage more than 805,000 homes, provide services to more than two million people and have helped more than 60,000 people find work since 2010.
Beth Danby, Community Investment Officer at North Star, said: “We’re delighted to be able to help fund and support projects like the one Sarah is a part of. We want to give the people living in our communities the best opportunities we can, through a range of inclusive, educational and beneficial projects.
“We also helped support this projects management committee, helping Sarah develop a community garden with play equipment and converted an empty property into a community hub. This allows the YMCA to run CV workshops from this space every week, helping local people seek and apply for jobs.”
