Funding Updates

The Good Shepherd

The Alternate Giving Campaign allocated funds to us to help run our meaningful activities program. The funds helped us to relaunch our weekly fishing group and helped us to keep going with our creative art group, funding a staff facilitator as well as resources.

I cannot tell you how delighted we were to get this funding. The fishing project was a great success. One of our service users who was an entrenched rough sleeper had recently started volunteering with us. His passion was fishing so we were able to arrange a day out buying all the equipment which he took the lead on and loved the day out. He was needed and valued and this had a massive impact on his emotional wellbeing.

Over the year we were able to take service users fishing at Wildside Activity Centre and Poole Hall. Some of those who attended were on our Housing First program and would be considered to have the most complex needs with a background of entrenched rough sleeping and addiction issues. The sessions were a great success. We were able to take people out of their chaotic lives and provide them with a completely different landscape. Fishing in nature had positive benefits for both their physical and mental health and a lot of fun was had, and friendships forged.

The funds for the art enabled us to keep the group going with a facilitator and much needed resources. The art group has been a delight to run and the impact on our service users’ emotional wellbeing has been tenfold. Most of the group have mental health issues and art is the perfect platform to create a safe environment and the opportunity to express themselves through art. We were able to work on this year’s calendar. The group were thrilled to see their artwork published and to help fundraise for The Good Shepherd as a way of giving back.

P3 Navigator

In May 2023 P3 Navigator received a £2000 donation from Alternative Giving.  This has enabled the team to provide support to 82 people, with the funding being spent as below:

• 40 people have been supported with a mobile phone – this has facilitated them making/keeping in contact regarding their Homeless/Housing applications.
• 30 people were provided with essential clothing items.
• 5 people were supported with funding for travel costs to get to new accommodation.
• 3 people were supported with emergency accommodation, preventing them spending a night on the streets. Following this we provided support to move into more secure accommodation.
• 2 people were supported to purchase white goods and furniture – essential items for new properties that they could not have otherwise afforded.
• 1 person was provided funding to purchase identification for their homeless application – with this and support from our team they were allocated priority duty for housing after their assessment.

TB Connect

Funding Received – £2,800

Thank you to Alternative Giving for funding our project ‘Empower’, we were able to help assist and support 37 transgenders/nonbinary (LGBT+) individuals across the Wolverhampton with items such as food, clothing and electricity. All individuals we spoke to explain the detrimental effect of the current living cost rises but also the discrimination in workplaces forcing individuals to leave their jobs as well as lack of opportunities to become employed.

We spoke to individuals in person and online who were homeless and sleeping on the streets to people who were living in cold empty properties and feeling very anxious and isolated.

The project has helped equip us with evidence-based information and statistics in Wolverhampton and real lived experiences that highlight the common struggles in the community and how isolation, discrimination can have an all-around affect on a person’s mental health but also contribute to financial pressures.

Word of the project spread amongst the community and many that have shown interest in becoming volunteers for TNB Connect.

We were approached by other members of the LGBT+ community who we also supported as we do not exclude anybody from the entire community that reaches out to us.

We noticed the gratitude and happiness from those we supported as for many, had no where else to turn to.

We were commonly told how some individuals were relieved to have the support of the project and to know that TNB Connect were available to help build connections and signpost to other organisations that could be of help. We have also been told how much this helped with people’s mental health and how being able to eat and have food made them more motivated and improved their mood.

This was a very successful project that we were able to take a lot from our selves in terms of hearing voices of the community and the financial struggles that can be faced when it comes to being Transgender and how this contributes to a growing issue.

On behalf of TNB Connect and those who were supported we want to say a big thank you to Alternative Giving CIO.