Blog | Middlesbrough Voluntary Development Agency

The Christmas spirit is still alive and kicking

2 December 2020 - 10:12pm

It all started with an innocent question posted on our Teams chat by Kelly Baxter who works on our We Care You Care project who had been asked by a Kinship support group if she knew of any help this year for children’s Christmas presents. That set off all the staff at MVDA who got busy looking into the support on offer and different ways of potentially helping.

“If anyone kicks off with me, I’m walking out.” Using the arts to engage

22 January 2020 - 2:41pm

Guest blog by Jane Gray, Co-Director, Creative Learning North East

“If I’m bored, I’m walking out.”

“OK – that’s fine.”

“If anyone kicks off with me, I’m walking out.”

“That’s fine too. Thanks for letting us know.”

“I’m not performing. No way.”

“That’s ok. We can do it however you want to do it.”

The power of digital to support collaboration

7 August 2018 - 9:13pm

Ordinary Radical – Lucy Cuzzocrea

We need to get prevention back on the agenda!

25 July 2018 - 4:38pm

If I’d known then what I know now!

A few of us at MVDA were having one of those ‘I wish I’d known then what I know now’ conversations last week. We, parents of now adult children, were recounting the very real, and unchanging struggle of parenthood in the context of our awareness of the many things we’ve got wrong with our kids. We shared some things we probably don’t admit too often and things we certainly wouldn’t admit beyond the bond of our developing friendship as colleagues.

How Sported uses Sport for Development in all its diverse ways

3 August 2017 - 11:51am

Guest blog by Emily Burns, North East Regional Manager at Sported

Every week at the ARC in the centre of Stockton on Tees young women of varying backgrounds and nationalities come together to celebrate their diversity, learn about different cultures and get fit in the process.

Whilst five miles across town in Coulby Newham, a diverse group of young men, including asylum seekers, travellers, offenders and ex-offenders, come together to improve their health and well-being, and in some cases get their lives back on the right tracks.