Empowering Others
Helping Those Who Need Us Most
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Description of the project:
Issues of mental health within the Black community are sensitive. Still, we intend to create an avenue for the rapid project to eradicate some aspects of stigmatisation that are generalised over time amongst the older generation. However, the concept of first aid awareness and training programs for the Black community through sports events and music lessons, in other to empower those vulnerable to be the target and initial first support in place for them to access mental health project plans and get the proper help needed at the earlier stage. The project is called: Uplifting Project Calderdale (Black’s Community). It will offer music lessons, sports classes, and IT support from a local community centre. The music lessons and sports classes will be for young people aged 16 -21. This age group was chosen as there are not many services or support currently in Calderdale for young people. This allows them to learn new things and socialise in a safe space. Local church members will teach the music lessons (New Hope United Reform Church). They have experience playing the organ, piano and drumming, meaning a range of musical skills can be shared with those attending the classes. The sports classes will be run from Halifax Academy Sports Centre. Again, the centre has facilities to offer a range of sports, including football, basketball, and netball. Brown Giwa and volunteers will run the sports sessions.
Alongside the types, monthly talks will be held for the community at the central library; these talks will be mental health themed and will work towards reducing stigma around mental health struggles in the community. The project aims to empower young people accessing the services to become community advocates, become examples to others, and promote mental health care. Finally, we aim to purchase laptops for this project and create our local e-library. This means members of our community in Warley can access the internet for free. We will also run IT education and support sessions to build computer literacy, a necessary skill. The need for an e-library came from our organisation’s support of a local homeless person we supported to complete a housing application, which is all online. He is now in temporary accommodation for the winter, which would not have happened if he did not have access to a computer.
2. How many people will your project support?
We believe this project will benefit around 100 people directly.
3. How will your project support people affect by mental health inequalities?
There is a profound paradox at the centre of Black people's experience of mental health services in England. Young Black men are heavily over-represented in the most restrictive parts of the service, including secure services. In addition, Black people generally have an overwhelmingly negative experience of mental health services. Yet these communities are not accessing primary care, mental health promotion and specialist community services, which might prevent or lessen their mental health problems. They are getting the mental health services they do not want but not the ones they do or might want to reach a point in the relationship between the Black communities and mental health services where there are genuine Circles of Fear.
Black people mistrust and often fear services, and staff are often wary of the Black community, fearing criticism and not knowing how to respond, and fearful of young Black men. Our organisation's effort will reach the evaluated level of success to improve more on mental health inequalities crisis issues within our community. Not only can the stress of poverty and debt lead to mental health problems, but they can also worsen existing mental health problems. Spotlight faith group research shows that socioeconomic disadvantage is a cause of depression amongst Black people in Calderdale. One of the reasons for this may be due to people comparing themselves to others in unequal societies. Our socioeconomic circumstances and risk of developing mental health problems can make poor mental health more prevalent in specific communities. The Healthy Survey of England consistently finds that Black people in the lowest socioeconomic class have the most significant risk of mental health problems. And disadvantaged young people are two to three times more likely to develop mental health problems. If we can reduce mental health inequalities in society and support communities and individuals to mitigate their effects, we can also reduce the prevalence of mental health problems. In many ways, like sports, the event spotlight faith group is championing Calderdale for healthy sound minds initiative programs. These adverse effects can build up over time, leading to mental health problems. Still, we can turn it around to be positive effects through socialisation such as sports, music lesson is an excellent form of therapy for mental health issues. The faith in Spotlight Faith Group Organisation stands for faith in ourselves and faith within our community. If we encourage those to believe in themselves against racism and discrimination and to have confidence that their local community will be there for them if they are struggling, this can build powerful connections and create a resilient community.
Building this community means people will not have to tackle inequalities alone; they can do it together.
Therefore, this project aims to bring together together together the community, especially young people. We can build community strength and trust by using the common ground of enjoying sports or music classes. Once this is created, we can discuss mental health, opening the topic up and reducing stigmas. It is imperative to know that the last event I attended through Healthy mind programs at the Inspired Centre opposite Halifax college did not represent so many Black people in the campaign for mental health within Calderdale. In order words, we need the inclusion diversity outcome measures to prevent inequalities and disparities amongst the Black community.
4. How have people likely to benefit from your project helped shape the activity or activities you are planning?
This project and this organisation are created from the ideas of local black people struggling with mental health issues. Many of these ideas have grown over the four years that the chairman of Spotlight, Brown Giwa, has been working to improve mental health within Calderdale. It has also been created with the organisation's members, many of whom lend their skills and time to ensure the classes can be run. The success of our uplifting project depends mainly on how well you can engage your community. A community with Black people's input can help us shape the project vision, ensure spotlight faith group organisations are responding to local needs, and help us to build support for our development ideas. Ideally, the community should be involved from a very early stage; this will allow us to form lasting relationships with Black community members, and we ensure our development support will be an addition to the problematic mental health issues that everyone can benefit from the awareness. It is not a myth that healthy minds come first in our community. In addition, community involvement is widely described as integral to reducing mental health disparities. The black community in Calderdale's acceptance and investment are necessary interventions to reach sufficient saturation levels to affect population-based outcomes. Several models exist that engage Black community members in planning, implementing and evaluating our uplifting project Calderdale (Black community) to thrive and plan for those in need, especially vulnerable ones.
Moreover, studies have demonstrated a correlation between coalition development and improved mental health practices in Black minority communities. It is the main goal for people who need help to benefit from this project, and it will bring about the changes we call for in our Calderdale community. It will not happen in a day, but we will surely reach our ultimate aim, objective, and goal to shape the activity or activities of the mental health crisis in the Black community. More so, the successful interventions in trusted community institutions such as our spotlight faith group organisation and churches have become particularly widespread to bridge the gap of mental health inequalities across the West Yorkshire regional body.
5. How will people be referred to or signposted towards your project? As this project is mainly aimed at young people, we will signpost them towards the project using our social media, including Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Twitter. We will also liaise with other local organisations and share the opportunities we are offering. Using the local network of VSCE organisations means we can access many people in Calderdale and have young people signposted in from other projects. Within our community, we aim to use word of mouth, share details of the services within the church and community centre, and invest in standing poles and leaflets to share information quickly.
6. What will happen after the funding for your project ends? This project's budget will help us buy equipment for sports and music classes and laptops to stock our e-library. Once the project finishes, we will still have this equipment and continue using it. Since most of our classes will be run by volunteers during the project, they can restart once funding ends. We also aim to create community advocates from the young people who attend our sessions; this means many of them will be able to support the delivery of future sessions and grow the organisation's volunteer pool. This is the same for the e-library, as the project funding will allow us to purchase the laptops, and volunteers will run the library; we will continue community access to the library after the project's's's's ends. We also hope this project will allow us to raise our profile locally through the support of Healthy Minds. Becoming better known within Calderdale means we can apply for future funding and build a support network of other organisations. All will be well once we exit; we have implemented so well that the mental health initiative of uplifting project Calderdale participants and partners will be ready and able to carry on without us. We may assume that the only vital outcomes and impacts are within our logical theories regarding mental health in the Black community. Thus, there is no need to return to explore unexpected negative ones or ways the Black people we strengthened may have innovated in unexpectedly beautiful ways. A Post-project evaluation provides data for a deeper analysis of sustainability. It helps to appreciate the numerous avenues the beneficiaries take in incorporating development projects into their lives. The outcome of this project continues, though, because ends are not an option for us as an organisation in Calderdale.
7. How do you aim to collect data throughout the project?
We will use various collection methods to ensure we can share a wide range of data with you. This will include taking registers and general information such as gender and age from the participants of our classes. We will also get participants to complete a survey before and after they finish a series of classes to show the impact attending our sessions has on them. Finally, we will take pictures and videos of aspects of all the activities to offer a visual representation of our services.
