Teams and Bensham Community Care is celebrating after being awarded £20,000 in National Lottery funding to support its work providing social groups for older people from Central and Inner West areas of Gateshead.
Our charity, based in Teams, Gateshead, will use the money to continue our popular men's groups and lunch clubs at our warm, welcoming centre on Bolam Street.
Teams and Bensham Community Care has been running since 1990 and has a wonderful team of 9 staff and 7 volunteers, and we support around 100 people every year.
The charity was founded by local GP, Margaret Sherratt, Reverend Brian Howell and other members of the community. Margaret was seeing an increasing number of her patients becoming affected by isolation and loneliness. This was in some part caused by housing redevelopments in the area which saw lots of family sized homes demolished. Families were relocated, leaving older people behind without close relatives living nearby. To improve the health and wellbeing of older people in the community, Margaret (still a trustee today), along with Brian and local residents, established our charity to provide opportunities for older people to meet socially and build new support networks.
The group now runs three lunch clubs and two men's groups every week for local people aged 65 and over, where they enjoy a hot two-course meal, activities, games, quizzes, and there's always someone to talk to.
The groups are in an ideal setting for people to make lasting friendships, improve wellbeing and have a lovely day out in the company of others. Attendees regularly tell us about the increased confidence and positivity they experience as a result of coming along to the centre, and, by having transport from home and back again on our accessible minibus, we make it easy for people to attend who would otherwise be unable to travel on their own.
The new funding from The National Lottery Community Fund, which distributes money raised by National Lottery players for good causes and is the largest community funder in the UK, will help our groups and minibus transport to continue for the next 12 months.
At the same time, we will be able to continue to deliver thousands of hot meals to older people in the community over the next year, to those who do not attend our groups, but benefit greatly by having a hot meal delivered to them at home.
We're delighted that The National Lottery Community Fund has recognised our work in this way. Now, thanks to National Lottery players we will be able to ensure older people in our community have a safe, inclusive environment where they can come along and enjoy a hot meal and activities with friends. Many of our lunch club and men's group members tell us that meeting new people and making meaningful friendships is most valuable to them, and having other people to talk to about any issues they are facing, who understand what they are going through, is priceless.
The National Lottery Community Fund recently launched its strategy, ‘It starts with community’, which will underpin its efforts to distribute at least £4 billion of National Lottery funding by 2030.
As part of this, the funder has four key missions, which are to support communities to come together, be environmentally sustainable, help children and young people thrive and enable people to live healthier lives.
National Lottery players raise over £30 million a week for good causes across the UK. Thanks to them, last year (2023/24) The National Lottery Community Fund awarded over half a billion pounds (£686.3 million) of life-changing funding to communities across the UK, supporting over 13,700 projects to turn their great ideas into reality.
To find out more visit www.TNLCommunityFund.org.uk
If you or someone you know would like more information about the Teams and Bensham Community Care centre, we're always happy to answer any questions, arrange a home visit or to help in any other way we can. Call our team on 0191 4600297.
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