HDH (Edinburgh)

The Venchie is situated in Craigmillar, in the south east of Edinburgh, and provides children and young people in the Greater Craigmillar area with a range of play, recreation, informal learning and issue-based children’s work within a purpose-built centre, on the grounds of an adventure playground. The building is accessible to people with disabilities, and we are registered under the Care Inspectorate. The centre comprises an arts and crafts room, sports hall, kitchen, office, meeting room / computer room and a large communal area to which all the other rooms are connected. The building sits within over half an acre of land which makes up the adventure playground. This area has a range of high quality manufacturer-designed fixed play equipment, an MUGA (Multi-Use Game Area), swings, a sand play area, and purpose-built fire pit. The location, building and grounds provide an environment conducive to delivering a range of developmental opportunities for children and young people. The Venchie has 59+ years’ experience of working with children and young people in Craigmillar and has always adapted and developed its programme to reflect the changing needs of its users. The main programmes which the project has developed over the last few years and which we intend to maintain include: • Holiday Provision - Open access February mid term, Easter, Summer and October mid term holiday programmes for local children and young people where we tackle holiday hunger. • After School Clubs - A term time programme, which focuses on developing children skills through play and social opportunities • PANDAS (Protected, Achieving, Nurtured, Diverse, Active, Safe) is an early morning club where children are collected from home. This is based on a referral system where we work with children and families who have complex needs and parents/carers struggle to get their children to school. PANDAS enables children to get to school on time having had a nutritious breakfast, so they are ready to learn. • Parent/Toddlers groups running three mornings per week, working with parents who are often socially isolated and whose first language is not English. * We offer a residential at least once per year, taking 12 children who are unlikely to have a family holiday on a residential, which offers them opportunities to develop their social skills and try activities such as canoeing and speedboat excursions which they would be otherwise unable to access. • Food Poverty/holiday hunger • Period Poverty • Nappy Poverty Currently we address food poverty by offering parents/carers excess food that we have. We often get this food by means of donations from Helping Hands who have food donation campaigns. We wish to expand on this and offer a weekly pantry where parents/carers can access food on a more regular basis. We hope to also cover this by offering ambient and non-ambient products, along with domestic household goods such as cleaning materials and toiletries.

Loganlea Miners Social and Charitable Society aim to help our community by providing a hub whereby the residents can socialise and take part in recreational activities. Our new boxing club will assist in this. We also aim to assist in minimising the poverty gap that exists in our village. We aim to do this by providing affordable good quality food while allowing the individuals to maintain their dignity by charging a small fee. The Village Larder has been set up specifically for this. We have recently joined Neighbourly and soon we will have surplus supplies from Lidl and Aldi to give out free of charge at our Larder. Big thank you to Neighbourly for all your help. The Hub also organises activities for all ages. We have Line Dancing, a toddkers group and bingo for our seniors. We have a summer programme for the local kids. This involves trips away to the beach, farm parks, the zoo and swimmimg. We try to provide a lunch to take on these trips. Our seniors in the village join in with afternoon teas and a Christmas dinner. We also had a trip to the Theatre this year. Access to employment visit our facility every two weeks. We also have visits from The Citizens Advice. West Lothian Financial Inclusion also supports our community by holding FREE coat giveaways.

Every day, people go hungry in the UK for all kinds of reasons, from changes and delays in the benefits system to redundancy to receiving an unexpectedly large bill for a major repair. A simple box of food makes a big difference, with foodbanks helping prevent crime, housing loss, family breakdown and mental health problems. West Lothian Foodbank relies on the support of local people, businesses and communities to help alleviate poverty and hunger in our community. Food donations Non-perishable in-date food is donated by the public at places across the local community, such as schools, churches and businesses, as well as supermarket collection points. It is then sorted and packed into boxes by volunteers, ready to be given to people in need. Food vouchers Care professionals such as doctors, health visitors, schools and social workers identify people in crisis and issue them with a foodbank voucher. They can exchange this voucher for a foodbank parcel of seven days’ nutritionally balanced, non-perishable food. The help we give… Our foodbanks offers a lot more than food. Our volunteers offer a listening ear to clients over a warm drink, and signpost people to other charities and agencies who can help resolve the underlying cause of the crisis. There are many ways to help The Trussell Trust as a volunteer from helping at collection points, to stock-taking and audits, to helping us refurbish our premises. We can continue supporting people in crisis thanks to passionate people giving their time to help their hungry neighbours. Please get involved by following our project page and share this project with your friends and followers using the social icons on this page. Click the volunteering tab above to see our upcoming volunteer events and sign up to help us tackle food poverty together.