Blog | Middlesbrough Voluntary Development Agency

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?

“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.”

Collaborate – why should we?

21 November 2019 - 12:25pm

Collaborate: “two or more people working together towards shared goals”

At a time when resources are limited and need is increasing, we need to work differently if we hope to make a reasonable impact on the society we exist to serve.

Money is in short supply; people with energy, ideas, skills and empathy are not. We can work differently together to make the best use of what is available – but we can only achieve that if we share what we have with others.