Caring for our community helpers

Are you helping people in your community to cope with Coronavirus?

Have you felt stressed? Anxious? Depressed? Overwhelmed?

Have you been juggling work? volunteering? furlough? homeschooling? supporting and caring for others?

Then you are amazing and need to be recognised and valued for your kindness.

We have now been experiencing the pandemic for 12 months and all that it brings.

Thanks to a grant from the Local Connections Fund we are running two creative wellbeing workshops for community helpers and a celebration event to say a big thank you to people from community groups, charities, individual volunteers and kind neighbours.

The COVID Community Helpers Creative Wellbeing Workshops are on

Tuesday 2nd March 2021 from 10.30am till 12.30pm

Friday 12th March 2021 from 10.30am till 12.30pm

At the workshops will focus on our own self care … a time of reflection, relaxation and restoration for our mental and emotional well being. Each session will include a hands-on creative activity. We will post out the materials to you before the session, once you have booked on.

We also have funding for Celebration event on the 24th March from 1-4pm.

The event will include

• wellbeing workshops,
• time to reflect on what we have learned from our experience of community helping in the pandemic
• a big thank you to community helpers in North Staffordshire

You can sign up for our free sessions here at Eventbrite.

We will email you with information and the link to join the online sessions on Zoom.

All the Small Things CiC is a Social Action Hub. We have signed up to the Community Action Response for COVID-19.

We are working in partnership with the Community Organisers Local Organising Group to facilitate regular peer support sessions. We are working with local partner organisations to make sure people know where to get support and how to make a difference in their communities.

As a Social Action Hub we bring people taking social action together to help us all to share experiences and learn together. One of the ways we do this is with Peer Mentoring. Peer Mentoring Groups last up to two hours when we:

• have time to meet each other
• hear what we are all doing in our communities,
• talk about concerns and questions we would like help with
• suggest places we can go for guidance, advice and more support

If you have any questions please email Penny or Sarah:

allthesmallthingscic@gmail.com

Thank You for all of the hard work you are doing in your workplaces and communities at this time.

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COVID, Loneliness, Community Action

On Thursday 21st January from 1-3pm on zoom we held a peer support session for community helpers. The theme was COVID, Loneliness and Community Action.

We heard from 5 people each sharing their experiences of different communities and how they have reached and supported people to help them deal with COVID lockdown and isolation.

We looked at the Community Organising framework to help us think about what action we can take together.

We are planning a follow up session in March 2021.

understanding_loneliness_toolkit_-_great_winter_get_togetherDownload

You can read the notes here.

loneliness-peer-support-21.01.2021-meeting-notesDownload

Here is a video of the zoom session – click this link to view.

Peer Support for Community Helpers

Are you helping people in your community?

All the Small Things CiC is a Social Action Hub. It is important that community helpers have support for their own wellbeing. We give people time to stop, think and share tips for looking after ourselves.

We connect people together who are busy supporting people in their communities. We help people share their experiences and ideas, share information and resources. We work with local partner organisations to make sure people know where to get support and how to make a difference in their communities.

As a Social Action Hub we bring people taking social action together to help us all to share experiences and learn together. One of the ways we do this is with Peer Mentoring Groups.

You are invited to join regular peer support sessions online, for community helpers.

Peer Mentoring Groups last up to two hours. We

• have time to meet each other
• hear what we are all doing in our communities,
• talk about concerns and questions we would like help with
• suggest places we can go for guidance, advice and more support

In all of our projects we try to include enough funding to run a few peer support sessions for community helpers.

If you are a community group, charity or an individual volunteer, please contact us if you are interested.

Please email Penny or Sarah allthesmallthingscic@gmail.com

We signed up to the Community Action Response for COVID-19. We had funding from the National Emergencies Trust through Staffordshire Community Foundation from June to September to run two sessions a month in 2020.