Welcome to the Be Well partnership, an innovative partnership of three community businesses which is trying to change the world – or at least that bit of it around Glossop.
The partnership is made up of Be Well Active whose specialism is in delivering more active physical activity sessions for more active older people; Glossop Community Allotment CIC who grow fruit, vegetables and people’s wellbeing up on the Dinting Lane allotments; and WellFit Health & Wellbeing CIC, which we think of as “the mothership”, which employs, deploys and develops our staff and volunteers, tries to stay on top of the marketing and covers off all the back office functions that well-run companies need.
We believe that a little bit of social or physical activity does you good and we work with GP surgeries, schools, local sports clubs and community groups to find ways to help people break the habits of inactivity, isolation and loneliness.
What we do
We like to call ourselves a “wellbeing organization” and work primarily in disadvantaged communities because we want to help smooth out the “health inequalities” which currently prevail. But once we establish a session whether it be in a pub, at a school or using another community asset, we work to break down barriers and are happy to welcome people from across the social spectrum and from any part of town; or beyond. All of our sessions are as sociable as we can make them and our focus is always on the participants.
Who we do it for
We do what we do for the people of Glossop and beyond, because that’s where we live. We have over twelve years’ experience of working with older people so we do a lot with that age group but we have worked with mothers of young children, with people in middle age, we have brought nursery children together with sheltered accommodation residents and we have done some fantastic work with teenagers living chaotic lives with our friends from social services. We just want to help really.
How we are funded
Over the twelve years of our existence we have been given grants and commissions by a number of agencies starting way back in 2012 when Cottage Lane Surgery commissioned us. Since then we have worked with agencies including Derbyshire County Council, High Peak Borough Council, Foundation Derbyshire, Comic Relief, the National Lottery Community Fund, Public Health Derbyshire, the Heritage Lottery Fund, Age UK Tameside, Public Health Tameside, Tameside & Glossop Integrated Care Trust, Sport Relief, SCOPE, local councillors, British Science Week, Canal and River Trust (which accounts for the picture of the boat trip above) and, once, the England Money-Lending Team (on the graffiti art project in the picture).
Where are we heading?
We hope to continue our Intergenerational projects in the community; expanding our allotment offer to new sites and projects and developing a sustainable business model which will allow us to keep helping people while not being reliant on grant funding.
But mostly we’ll be striving to make the lives of local people better by organizing social and purposeful activity close to where they live at a price they can afford. If you would like to help us make this happen, we would love to hear from you. Volunteers are the lifeblood of our organisation and there is always room for people who want to make a difference. Please call us or drop us a line