Wellbeing garden project - Snaith School
Funding from the Goole Wind Farms Community Fund has allowed the school to run a gardening project and create an outdoor wellbeing space in the school grounds. The quiet and relaxing outdoor space means lots of young people in the school benefit from the calming effects of being in nature, potentially reducing stress levels, improving mood and enhancing self-esteem.
The project also directly engaged some of the more vulnerable students who had the opportunity to get involved with the planting and maintenance of the garden, building skills which will help them to thrive in the classroom. Growing and caring for plants requires exercising patience, resilience, persistence and commitment. Taking responsibility for helping plants to grow means being trusted to care for them, and helping them to thrive can brings feelings of pride and empowerment.
Community café and garden centre - The Green Team
Development of a community café and garden centre has been supported by the Goole Wind Farms Community Fund. It is part of a recent relocation project to bring all of the Green Teams activities, which also include a charity gardening service and commercial gardening service, onto one site. Overall this will help to facilitate the continued growth of the organisation as well as relieving many of the historic challenges of being based on a split site.
The Green Team provides benefit to a significant number of people – both Volunteers and customers, some of whom may be facing economic, personal or social disadvantage.
For the majority of Volunteers, the greatest development is not necessarily in acquiring gardening skills and knowledge but often more personal. Some have faced huge life challenges or have had negative experiences through their childhood or adulthood but by being exposed to such a positive, supportive environment, where the Green Tea can offer stability, they become the foundation of an inspirational personal transformation and they begin to flourish as individuals.
At the garden centre volunteers have the opportunity to plant seeds, grow plants and flowers which are then sold on to the public to raise money for the charity. This coupled with the profits from the café will help to build the long term sustainability of the charity.
Local heritage archive project - Yorkshire Waterways Heritage Society
The Yorkshire Waterways Heritage Society aim to illuminate the lives of the hard working watermen who plied their trade on the waterways of 19th and 20th century Yorkshire, sharing and preserving their stories for future generations.
The late Brian Masterman was an Old Goole historian, who amassed an extensive local heritage collection. Funding from the Goole Wind Farms Community Fund has contributed to the archiving of this local historians life work including purchase of suitable storage containers.
The collection includes documents, photographs and artefacts of old Goole, the people who lived in the area and has a particular focus on ship building. Volunteers have been sorting, cataloguing and scanning the archive, making sure it is safe and preserved for the education of future generations.
