AVIVA GRANT.

We are a friendship group for adults open to anyone over the age of 18. Our vision is "Freedom form stigmatization", Our Mission" to facilitate focus and purpose of individuals, social inclusion and community integration. Our aims are to reduce social isolation in the East Cleveland area.

The group is entirely run by volunteers, including, teacher, social worker, psychiatric nurse, ex-businessman and councillor

What we do: group sessions consist of a presentation, or interactive activity, then an exercise session. This provides the inclusion stated in the mission statement and the community integration is met by taster sessions from professional teachers. The afternoons are arts and crafts activities, which all aim to foster social development and skills.

We monitor our effectiveness weekly and analyse all results weekly and at board meetings. The programme is altered accordingly Members suggestions are always taken into account.

Social activities include trips out to for example: Leeds for Xmas Shopping, The planetarium, Xmas dinner, cafe each week and tea at local restaurants occasionally.

The group has been responsible for the development of many new friendships.

On a confidential, one to one basis, volunteers have offered practical and emotional support.

Development of the project: We facilitate focus and purpose to individuals by giving them aims to help run the group. The idea is to give everyone a small job that they are capable of doing. Members can be given presentation help if they wish to provide a session perhaps based on a hobby or interest.

Interest can be developed, e.g. arts and crafts, and we hope to develop photography, in which there has been a great deal of interest shown. We also want to develop digital inclusion and creativity. Both of these topics shall be detailed later.

Another development is outreach. We need to advertise and we need in some way to reach isolated people before mental health issues rule their lives. We also need to provide subsidised transport as we will explain.

Equally important, as our group is only open one day a week, it is important to integrate our group into society. We are a friendship group and we offer mutual support.

As mental health deteriorates, relationships with others become increasingly difficult and isolation can become much worse. It is not so much the lonely people that loiter in the village centres that are most at risk of this isolation but the ones who remain at home, virtual recluses. Mental health issues are a real risk for them. Many people who are experiencing this type of isolation/depression have little confidence in getting themselves from A to B. The public transport system in East Cleveland is also poor. Mental health patients on medication cannot often use the public transport system anyway. We would like to use Tees Valley to run a subsidised transport service.

There may also be people with physical or learning disabilities who would benefit from this transport service because they want to attend our sessions.

On the subject of integration, we would like to expand this service. We already bring in "taster sessions" from the community and this will continue but we are aware that personal finance limits

uptake of courses. We would like to subsidise this. The same applies to educational and cultural visits. Some cannot afford to go. We do realise there would have to be a means test.

Digital inclusion and creativity is part of the modern world and is something which people on low incomes often do not become involved with.

We would like 8 laptops, 1 printer and a Promethean whiteboard.

The advantage of a Promethean whiteboard is that it is wholly interactive. The entire group can participate in whatever activity is set. It plays DVDs or other presentations.

Cameras would enable the enormous talent within our group to be developed. See; http://fridayfriends.org

RENTAL SECURITY IS CRUCIAL TO THE PROJECT.£50 per week.