Communiversity programme – transforming lives through learning
Bank of America is the Bromley by Bow Centre’s leading corporate partner with its support of our innovative Communiversity programme. The bank has provided vital funding which supports a broad range of projects working with some of the most vulnerable in our community.
The partnership has enabled the Centre to deliver a whole range of projects that it would not have otherwise been able to and, in return, the Centre has been able to showcase this work and create some innovative opportunities for the bank to profile its work in the community. One of the more interesting approaches to this was the creation of the ‘King Kong Community Window’ in the Canary Wharf shopping centre!
In the first year of a three year partnership we have worked with young and old and supported almost two hundred people to learn new skills and begin to make important changes which will impact greatly on their own life and also the lives of their families and the wider community as they move forward.
The Communiversity Programme builds on the Bromley by Bow Centre’s track record over the past 24 years and supports a raft of projects which enable people to develop new skills and transform their lives. The programme works with people who have missed out on opportunities: isolated adults, often with physical and mental health problems; young people facing problems at school; and people of all ages with learning difficulties. There are three exciting strands to this partnership between the Bank of America and the Bromley by Bow Centre.
The SPRING FORWARD project has created a community garden with a dedicated team of volunteers. The project enables people who are out of work to learn new skills and develop a positive focus in their lives.
Over the year Spring Forward volunteers have created a community cuttings garden. All of these people are out of work and some struggle with issues such as anxiety and depression, often as a result of being isolated and not engaged in meaningful activity. Others, who are part of our allotment project have learnt new skills through the project in the past year.
The CREATIVE SPARKS project has supported young people to learn new skills in a creative setting. It has funded the set up and development of a new project called Shed East which teaches young people about music production, as well as broader skills around studio design and build and project management. The Foundation has also funded the young people’s social enterprise at the Bromley by Bow Centre, Signs of Life, which creates public murals. Many children never have the chance to explore their creativity, to learn about the arts or contribute in a positive way to their environment. Bank of America funding has supported a range of gallery visits for the young people and has match funded an extraordinary opportunity to see public murals in Nicaragua!
ENTERPRISING COMMUNITIES has turned an arts project into a fledgling social enterprise for artists with learning disabilities and also supports adult students to take the first steps into employment. This project has supported a community with very high levels of underachievement in education and chronic illness, both of which feed into high levels of unemployment and dependency on the welfare state, to move toward employment. With funding from the Bank of America we have established the Stepping Out project. During 2007-08 the Centre has made great strides in developing its work around supporting people into employment. We built on the models that the Centre has implemented in the past and restructured the delivery of employability and employment support to move towards completely integrating this within the Centre’s learning programmes as part of Communiversity.
The Bromley by Bow Centre has valued enormously its partnership with Bank of America over the past year. It looks forward to developing and building this relationship moving forward to ensure that even more people in East London are able to transform their lives with the support of the Bank of America Foundation.
We are immensely grateful for the support that the Bank has provided that has truly enabled us to....transform lives through learning.
