The Sheffield Community Champion Project, co-ordinated by SOAR and funded by Sheffield City Council, works alongside 11 community organisations. The Community Champions are supporting their communities by listening and helping spread trusted information about public health.
Read on for a glimpse into how the project works, from three of our fantastic partners: Firvale Community Hub, Sharrow Community Forum, and Zest.
*Names have been changed to protect identity.
Firvale Community Hub
Fiza* sadly lost her husband and now has 2 young children to look after on her own. Fiza has been finding it hard to keep her children entertained and happy and feels she may be slipping into depression. After chatting to one of our Community Champions, outside their children’s school, they attended the hub activities and was invited along to our upcoming holiday activities. Since attending the hub, Fiza has grown in confidence and started feeling like their old self. They said “I have loved coming to the Hub and the staff have become like my friends.”
Sharrow Community Forum
A parent raised concerns about her child’s sleep. Our Community Champion took time to listen to the issues that the family was experiencing and shared their own experiences as a parent. The Champion then signposted the parent to sources of information and support such as MAST, local GP, and Sheffield Children’s Hospital resources. As an organisation we then arranged for local MAST team to come and deliver a workshop on sleep hygiene which was free to attend and aimed at supporting parents of children over 12 months who are experiencing issues around sleep.
Without the Champion, the parent may not have opened up about their sleep concerns & Sharrow wouldn’t have known to host a sleep session. The power of Community Champions is summed up perfectly here.
Zest
If you don’t regularly use IT, it can be a struggle knowing where to get started. One of our Community Champions sat with a person and supported them in applying for their driving test. The person came back saying they had passed their written test and can now start driving lessons to help them get around!
One Community Champions attended our Women’s Group and was able to share diabetes information. One lady said “thank you for sharing, I learnt so much from attending this event and have now booked in for a GP appointment”. One person also saw a social media done by a Community Champion and said “after seeing your post I now see there is a clinic in my area I can get to after work.”
Community Champions are doing amazing work across their communities!
You can find out more about the Community Champions project here if you're interested in getting involved and being a Champion in your community!
Find more stories in our list of Case Studies here.
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