Plymouth Community Cancer Champions is a 3-year project, funded by Macmillan Cancer Support and hosted by Zebra Collective working in collaboration with community partners Age UK Plymouth and the Wolseley Trust Social Prescribing team.
This closely evaluated test and learn project is exploring and testing asset-based community development approaches to supporting people and communities whose cancer outcomes and experiences are known to be the worst because of the unjust and unacceptable barriers they face, such as poverty and discrimination.
Niqui Bond began as the Project Manager in early January 2024, and has spent the 1st quarter setting up the project and recruiting the rest of the Zebra team – a Community Engagement Worker, a Digital Inclusion Worker and a Volunteer Co-ordinator, while Age UK Plymouth has recruited a Community Engagement Worker for older adults and Wolseley Trust a Primary Care Link Worker.
For more information contact Niqui: niqui@zebra.coop
joint Solution-Focused Practice Group: 8 August 2024, 9.30am-12.30pm
The joint Solution-Focused Practice Group sessions are for people who have had some training in solution-focused practice, and wish to meet with others to develop their skills.
The sessions, co-facilitated by Guy Shennan and Marc Gardiner, are a continuing professional development opportunity which aims to bring together people committed to working in a solution-focused way to develop skills and build networks. Sessions comprise any one or more of:
Teaching
skills practice
case studies
group exercises and discussions
SF sessional video footage
– all good opportunities for practitioners to step back from the daily work and reflect, learn and refresh.
From 1st April 2024, Zebra holds the lease on the Neighbourhood Centre, a community space familiar to most Mount Wise residents.
We plan to restore the Centre and our hope is that it becomes a much-used space for our community.
We’ve been running our youth club here since March 2023, and some of us have worked out of this building since the 1990s.
We think this should be everyone’s Centre – so we want to know what local people would like to see happening here, and anything you’d like to offer – e.g. volunteering at the children’s and youth sessions or in other ways, starting new groups etc.
We held a Community Day on Saturday 11th May: we were lucky with the sun, and around 200 people came. The children played on the bouncy castle, with the various other outdoor games and in the ball pool in the UV darkroom, while dozens of adults shared their views on the future of the centre and how they’d like to be involved. We’ll be using this wealth of ideas, energy and information to work together with our fellow residents to shape the development of the centre – and as evidence to support bids to secure funding to pay for the developments suggested.
Start of the Cancer Champions programme, Plymouth 2024-27
After years of developing community initiatives in partnership with Macmillan, Zebra is pleased to be hosting this action research programme, exploring an asset-based community development (ABCD) approach to addressing the fact that people living in low income communities tend to have a significantly poorer experience of the cancer journey, from pre-diagnosis through to post-treatment.
Macmillan has designed a large-scale programme to test this approach in selected communities here in Plymouth, beginning in Devonport and Stonehouse. Zebra is leading, and collaborating with Age UK Plymouth and the social prescribing service at Wolseley Trust.
Niqui Bond, until recently a primary school assistant head in Plymouth, began as Project Manager at the start of January. Her 1st three months has been spent setting up the programme, including recruiting the team – 3 with Zebra and one each at Age UK Plymouth & Wolseley.
For more details on this project, email niqui@zebra.coop
