Pisces WM - Interview with Alvin Vernon

Road trip - Day three

Heath Town Community Support & Information Centre

In the middle of a pretty formidable council estate in Wolverhampton lies Heath Town Community Support & Information Centre. It took me about 15 minutes and a couple of phone calls to find the centre on the first floor of what seemed to me to be just another block of flats. As I came up the stairs I saw that in fact there was a whole concrete open level with a few shops and a courtyard.

I came through the door of the centre and the first thing that struck me was how busy the small office was. Phone calls were being made, stories recounted, documents rifled through and computers crowded around as several local residents were in the process of being helped out by four or so volunteers and staff members. I was soon greeted by Debbie Humphreys (who entered the competition) and Terry who is a volunteer and looks after their IT systems. After a brief chat with Debbie who was sure to give me a good grilling about the health and safety of wireless equipment, how the WiFi service works and so on I was handed over to Terry. Terry offered me a cup of tea, which I gratefully accepted and we started chatting about the centre as I set about testing the new Be broadband line that had recently gone live. After a few minutes everyone else had left the office for lunch and we started the installation.

The Heath Town Community Support & Information Centre provides services and advice to local residents on matters ranging from legal advice, job search, housing and even keeping in touch with family overseas.

The Be line worked fine and the installation went very smoothly. I thanked Terry for his time and a lovely cup of tea and headed back to the car. There was at least one more winner in Wolverhampton I wanted to get done by the end of the day.

Road trip – Day three

Narthex Sparkhill

Based at St John’s Church in Sparkhill, Birmingham, Narthex Sparkhill is a registered charity that works to promote inter cultural harmony. A large area of its focus is helping newly arrived refugees and asylum seekers.

Nigel Brookhouse whom I met told us “We work with refugees & asylum seekers who have no access to funding, we provide free resources to pregnant refugee asylum mums, we do advice, letters, help with forms, we run a refugee drop in centre and we provide free homework club to low income primary school children, we help people with debt support and with benefits and provide safe space for people of low income and ethnic minority communities, we are within the 4% most deprived communities and our facilities are provided for us by the local church who also use the facilities to support the local community.”

I stayed at the church with Nigel for some time, we chatted about Narthex, Freerunner, other charities and the state of the world in general. I got a lot out of it. Nigel is another one of those people who is working away diligently in the background, making a difference to peoples lives day by day.

We wandered around the huge church and tested how far the signal propagated out of the Narthex office. As expected, it didn’t make it as far as the front hall where events are sometimes held. Still, if the free service in the main office is successful hopefully some budget for an extension might be scraped together.

Nigel pointed out an enormous mural of Christ in the main church hall which is remarkable in that the feet of Christ are disproportionate to the rest of the body. Perhaps the artist thought that walking on water must require feet the size of small boats? Nigel said that unfortunately it is very likely that the mural will be removed or covered over if plans to renovate and change the layout of the church go ahead.

The installation completed, I left there a feeling lighter than when I went in, happy that we had chosen Narthex.

You can find out more about Narthex Sparkhill by visiting their website:

http://www.stjohnsparkhill.org.uk/WTPEZU95.htm

Thanks for reading.

Stuart Dixon

Road trip - Day two

Stuart sharing a little about the road trip.

Road trip - Day two

Penywaun Enterprise Partnership

I was smiling to myself as I crossed the Severn bridge, it was a few years since I had been into Wales and memories of my one and only Friday night out in Cardiff were coming back to me. I can clearly remember my friend saying “Just remember to keep your gob shut if we run into any troublemakers- we’ll be alright as long as they don’t realise your English.’

Wales is such a beautiful country and I felt lucky to be alive as I drove through the valleys on my way to Aberdare. So many great views were lost to me as I whizzed past I decided to stop off briefly on my way back again to soak up some of the countryside.

This time, the free WiFi was going in to the Cana centre, headquarters of the Penywaun Enterprise Partnership. Gary Foreman of PEP tells us “From a needs perspective, Penywaun ranks as the second most disadvantaged ward in Wales”. The Penywaun and Trenant estates have had high unemployment, low averages incomes and many of the familiar social problems of council estates like this all over the country.

The PEP have made a real difference to the area, their achievements include:

The Refurbishment of the Cana Centre
Tackling Joy Riding
Creating 400+ gardens where the estate was once open plan
The Cana Afterschool Club
Partnership in the Ladder & Build-It Projects 
Serving as Lead Body for Communities First

The free WiFi is going to provide internet access to the IT suite they already have in place as well as enable the local community and after school club to get online. I am really pleased we have chosen this site, it is clearly going to be a lot of use to the community.

I packed up my gear and got out just in time. A frenzy of local school kids was rapidly amassing in the main room, many more running past me as I made for the door.