Facts & Figures |
| Organisation Name: | The Bambury |
| Individual Name: | |
| Area Served: | Camlachie – known locally as Barrowfield. |
| Population: | 2200 locally … also works with people across Glasgow. |
| Sketch: | The Bambury Centre on the Barrowfield estate in Glasgow was established in 2001 in consultation with local people. The estate’s reputation during the 1990’s was one of poverty and violence: the Bambury has focused on training and employment to relieve poverty; complementing improvements in local housing. The Centre has battled to maintain its income, suffering significant cuts, and is working to tackle this through a creative approach to partnership-working and building ‘self-sufficiency’. |
| Legal Form: | Company limited by guarantee with charitable status. |
| Volunteers: | 40 |
| People Benefitting: | The whole community, particularly children, young people and families. |
| Staff: | 20 |
| Turnover: | £520,000 |
| Earned Income: | Two-thirds is earned-income, one third grant income: looking to move to 80%, 20% split. |
| Assets: | The Centre |
| Value of assets: | £1.6 million |
Roots & Links |
| Origins: | The Barrowfield estate was built during 2nd World War by the Glasgow Corporation. As unemployment grew in the 70s and 80s it became violent and poverty-stricken. Since 2001 the tenements have been replaced by terrace houses with gardens. The Chief Executive of the Bambury was employed in 1997 to focus on tackling the problems of poverty and unemployment. Consultation work with the local community led to the Camlachie Community Regeneration Strategy (1999); while ‘chapping on doors’ raised the funding for the Centre which opened in 2001. |
| Governance: | A Board of Directors: ten local people; local councillor; two external organisations – and a mission statement, vision and guiding principle. |
| Community Links: | The Centre is the community hub providing services to local people and families. |
| External Links: | Local/ Regional:
• East Centre & Calton Local Community Planning Partnership
• Glasgow City Council
• John Wheatley College
• local regeneration agencies
• private training providers
• West of Scotland Housing Association
National/ UK/ European:
• Learndirect Scotland
• Project Scotland
• Scottish Enterprise
• Skills Development Scotland
• Volunteer Development Scotland
• Voluntary Action Fund
National Community Networks:
• Development Trust Association Scotland
• Local People Leading
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Activities |
| Physical Hub: | The Bambury |
| Builds Local Capacity: | The Bambury provides training, learning and volunteering opportunities for local people, and childcare to support this. For instance, Project Scotland is providing funding for 12 local young people to participate in a skills and development programme at college and in the community. |
| Delivers Services: | Training and Learning Centre – provided in partnership with other training organisations:
• a test centre for the Construction Industry Certification Scheme card;
• a range of IT training;
• life skills and personal development for young people;
• Get Ready for Work courses for young people – training for working within construction, childcare, office and leisure sectors; and
• business development courses.
Childcare centre: affordable, high-quality childcare, out-of-school care and a crèche.
Facilities: meeting rooms, conference facilities, a function suite and PC-suites.
Volunteering coordinator: to support volunteering at the Bambury and Glasgow-wide.
|
| Develops/Manages Property: | Renting of office space. |
| Other: | Community Café and vending machines. |
| Main Achievements: | Improving the quality of life of local people - the evidence is there: unemployment has dropped to the Glasgow average; young people are doing well at school; the primary school sees the difference in children who’ve come from our Nursery; and secondary schools, Careers Scotland and employers tell us that the young people we work grow.
Surviving: we’ve experienced how vulnerable organisations can be financially.
Winning a National Award: we were the winners of the Scottish Urban Regeneration Forum awards for Best Practice: Partnership category in 2007.
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What Next |
| Biggest Challenge: | Service-level contracts: we need a level-playing field because we can do this work, given the chance - the community trusts us. Ministers have said that they are looking for evidence that government money is going into communities and making a ‘real’ difference, but this will only be achieved if agencies and local authorities recognise the value of community-based initiatives and work in partnership with them. |
| Lessons Learned: | Keeping your sense of direction: don’t be over-ambitious, and don’t be led or driven by funding.
Building a sustainable organisation: we’ve had to make good staff of nine, ten years experience redundant: how do you replace that? However, we’ve approached this in a sensible manner and we are confident that we will completely remove the deficit in our unrestricted funds by mid-2009. We can no longer depend on public grants: we have to be self-sufficient.
A welcoming centre: people from all over the City use the Bambury, and local people make them welcome. Over 100 young people a week come from across Glasgow, and we don’t have problems.
Partnership-working approach: this is crucial to the Bambury - there are no benefits to working in isolation. For instance, we’ve a service-level contract with Project Scotland. and we work with the private sector training organisation, TIGERS, on courses for young people and business.
Making links with other communities: we’ve worked with the Pulteneytown People’s Project in Wick on a community consultation there. Eight months ago we joined the Development Trust Association Scotland, and are developing our role. We’ve all got to come together.
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| Aspirations: | Dead simple … to become a self-sufficient, sustainable project, then we’ll always going to be here to meet the community’s aspirations and improve local people’s life chances and life quality. |
Contact |
| Name: | David McDermott |
| Title: | Chief Executive |
| Address Line 1: | 67 Yate Street |
| Address Line 2: | Camlachie |
| City: | Glasgow G31 4AE |
| County: | |
| Telephone: | 0141 550 3954 |
| Fax: | 0141 550 4113 |
| Email: | info@thebambury.org |
| Website URL: | http://www.thebambury.org |
| District: | |
