CCDP (Croydon Community Development Partnership) Project

In January 2020 ARCC was successful in our funding to The National Lottery Community Fund for a partnership project with ten other grass root organisations in the Borough over a period of three years providing Infrastructure Support to partners agencies and VCS organisations, Health & Wellbeing sessions, tackling DASV (Domestic Abuse & Sexual Violence) Prevention as well as Education Support, Positive Parenting and Mentoring.

Having worked with over 50 Asian VCS groups in the borough over the last two years ARCC quickly identified the need for this project having worked directly at grass root level with many of the groups on partnership projects and other small initiatives through the Council and other funders. Having held a number of consultations and focus groups to gauge interested partners from an initial list of 24 groups we decided to form a consortium with 10 other organisations that were unique in the work they were delivering to different cohort of service users in the borough working within their own specialism.

The CCDP Project was designed to holistically create an environment where Asian and local communities can thrive, and community led grassroots activities contributing to building an environment that engenders responsibilities and nurtures the positive things which people are willing to do to make their locality a better place to live and work.

The programme offers a core strengthening of the Asian VCS through partnership working;

To build family resilience, improve community cohesion and combat social isolation
To enable volunteering opportunities throughout the programmes, so the strong can share skills with struggling people and Carer’s can be given support and some respite,
To support parents to understand the educational system and thereby be able to support their children with their studies, engage young people using sport to have community conversations to prevent them being misled into a radical ideology.
To enable volunteering opportunities for young refugees and asylum seekers to support them to integrate into the community, backed by greater support to learn English.
To provide a provision of culturally specific DASV services to prevent domestic abuse.

Our service programme is designed to provide and support:

Infrastructure Support to partners agencies and VCS
Holistic approach to Health & Wellbeing
DASV (Domestic Abuse & Sexual Violence) Prevention
Education support, positive parenting and mentoring

All of these activities address the needs of the community and the outcomes identified by the Croydon Opportunity and Fairness Commission and Ambitious for Croydon Reports 2016.

Project Launch

The official launch of the CCDP Project took place in January 2020 where we were joined by our guest of honour The Deputy Mayor of Croydon Cllr. Maddie Henson who officially launched the project. The occasion was an opportunity for us to inform the community about the different service delivery offers that would take place as part of the project involving 11 different organisations. The CCDP Project delivery partners also gave an overview of their project and how the community could get involved and benefit.

Project Delivery Partners

BBSC (British Bangladeshi Society of Croydon)

BBSC works particularly with the Bangladeshi Community delivering activities around health & well-being, youth engagement, elderly projects, healthy cooking and nutrition classes.

They also hold young people’s empowerment programmes including language classes in the mother tongue, helping the children with Maths and English as well as providing welfare advice, guidance and signposting to the Bangladeshi community.

Eastern Oasis

Eatern Oasis offers a twice weekly luncheon club for older people in Croydon specialising in vegetarian and halal food cooked from fresh ingredients on site. Majority of their service users are Anglo-Indian.

The organisation offers weekly health and well-being activities including exercise classes such as yoga and dance. They also give informative talks and advice on healthy eating and nutrition. They also provide a befriending service and home visits to their members.

Elmwood Community Centre

Elmwood Community Centre works with families living in the Broad Green and Thornton Heath areas of Croydon. Many of their members come from Pakistan, India & East Africa with 90% coming from Croydon and rest from the surrounding borough.

The organisation meets once a week to provide weekly social gathering of elders and offer activities such as yoga, language classes, arts/crafts, talks, trips and holds celebratory events.

Freedom Together CIC

Freedon Together was formed in 2012 to deliver & facilitate educational groups and workshops for DASV (Domestic Abuse & Sexual Violence) survivors. The organisation delivers services to women around self esteem, healthy relationships and gender stereotyping.

Jagruti Women’s Group

Was formed in 1986 with the aim of providing activities and to promote healthy living in the community to combat isolation and to make Asian ladies to be Self-confident. To make them aware of the various health issues and bring confidence in themselves to do their own work like going to the surgery, hospital appointments, dentist and optician. The group meets once a week during term time only.

Lighthouse Educational Society

Lighthouse Educational Society works to enable and empower young people through education. They deliver a wide range of programme including; supplementary education, homework clubs, 11+ exams, consultancy, ESOL classes, parenting schools and hold community events.

Empowering Tamil Families

Empowering Tamil Families hold weekly sessions with parents from the Tamil community providing positive parenting training classes and fortnightly sessions between parent and child. The group also holds health and well-being yoga sessions and provides advice and guidance to women from the Tamil community on a number of topics including education, health, welfare and employment.

Tutoring Today

Tutoring Today was set out to give everyone the opportunity to learn and achieve their goals with the aim to create an engaging, motivating and inspiring learning environment. With the help of parents and a professionally designed curriculum Tutoring Today can help all children with different needs and abilities.

Under One Sky

Under One Sky facilitates learning in the local environment to provide refugee and asylum seeking children with opportunities in natural green safe spaces. To encourage them to grow in confidence, socialize and enjoy the right to play, facilitate better mental well-being, encourage learning such as basic numeracy and literacy so as to prepare them for school and develop some semblance of normal childhood experiences.

Unique Roots

Unique Roots & Healthy Living Spaces provides a community service promoting healthy lifestyle by creating healing gardening spaces. They work with clients that suffer from low level mental health on gardening projects that are therapeutic and teach new skills around garden maintenance and growing your own vegetables and herbs.