Blog | Middlesbrough Voluntary Development Agency

#NeverMoreNeeded campaign

8 September 2020 - 11:56am

Charity and voluntary organisations have responded to the urgent needs of people across the country – quickly, effectively and without question.

Putting everything in to helping their communities, they have put their own survival on the line. With little chance to fundraise, a loss of income from trading and providing services, and – most of all – much greater demand, many charities are now in real danger of having to close completely.

Let's work together to get basic digital access for Middlesbrough residents

24 June 2020 - 1:48pm

Guest blog by Sue Kearney, CEO at The Hope Foundation

Digital connectivity and access is a social justice and social inclusion issue. COVID-19 has demonstrated the basic lack of access for many Middlesbrough residents leading to loneliness and isolation at this time. The move towards more digital services (health, GP’s shopping online) means that local people will become further and increasingly disadvantaged due to one or all of the following

Stopping people slipping through the cracks in lockdown

11 June 2020 - 10:40am

Bini Araia is the projects manager of Investing in People and Culture (IPC) a regional charity with its head office in Middlesbrough, and we’ve asked him to share his experiences of how lockdown has been affecting people in marginalised communities. Here he shares two very powerful case studies of how without help to navigate the often complicated and inflexible systems, people can so easily slip through the cracks, with potentially fatal consequences.

Bini Araia makes the case for facemasks

28 May 2020 - 11:57am

Bini Araia from local charity IPC is encouraging us all to wear facemasks and is inviting people to a conversation about facemasks on Zoom.

Please support and collaborate with others to bring about a life-saving effort to encourage everyone to make home-made cloth masks to wear in places where social distancing is difficult. This needs to become our social norm for a little while to help us all to keep Covid-19 at bay.

Join me on Zoom at 11am on Thursday 4 June for a conversation about facemasks, details at the end of this blog.

Is COVID-19 the great leveller?

31 March 2020 - 1:45pm

The link between the Marmot Review 10 years on and COVID-19 - deprivation, poverty and health inequalities.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson said people (loved ones) are going to die due to the pandemic of COVID-19. The media, politicians and health experts have implied the effects will be across all strata of society, but is this disingenuous?