Annual Report

Evaluation Report Measuring the Impact of Manor House Development Trust 2009 - 2015

Written By Kate Pierpoint

Contents Foreword Executive Summary About Us Our Business Objectives 1. To what extent are we empowering people?

Defining Empowerment

Data Analysis

What is feeling empowered enabling people to do?

Take control of their health and wellbeing

Defining Health and Wellbeing

Project 1: The Well London programme

Project 2: Manor House PACT

Case studies: Thamasin, Maggie and Neil

Conclusion 1: We are empowering people to take control of their health & wellbeing Start a new business & run community groups

Project 3: Health Champions scheme

Project 4: Volunteering Programme

Project 5: Well London Grant Programme

Conclusion 2: V olunteering is fundamental to building a local voluntary sector Pursue training and employment opportunities

Project 6: Woodberry Works Club

Case studies from the Volunteering Programme

Conclusion 3: People are more likely to find work the more they engage with MHDT activities

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Contents

2. To what extent are we connecting people & organisations?

Defining Connecting

Forms of Connecting:

1.

Supporting isolated groups

Project 7: PACT Home Visits

Case studies: Sam & Sahera

Conclusion 4: Long-term impact on Fuel Poverty

2.

Collective learning

Project 8: PACT Meals

3. Long-term engagement

4. Empowering, connecting and using space to build community resilience and help people transform their lives

Project 11: The PACT Programme

Conclusion 9: We are helping to transform people’s lives and build community resilience

Methodology

Appendix 1: Theory of Change Map

Conclusion 5: P eople are more likely to change their behaviours, the longer they engage with MHDT activities

4. Building connections with other communities

Project 9: EDGEucation Overseas Youth Programme

Project 10: Community Trips

3. To what extent are we using space to benefit the community?

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1.

The Redmond Community Centre

1a. Pop-up Cafe Space

1b. Promoting the Arts

2.

Making use of local green spaces

3. Training sites

Conclusion 6: The Redmond Community Centre is a hub of community activity, allowing people to access a range of services over a long period of time

Conclusion 7: Making use of local green space is helping build pride of place and promote greener behaviours

Conclusion 8: Accessible, affordable space is fundamental to building a local voluntary sector

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Foreword

Executive Summary

Since the start of its regeneration,

the built environment at Woodberry Down has improved beyond recognition. Fantastic new flats and facilities have been built with old, dangerous and un-loved parts demolished and replaced. But however beautiful and important the physical transformation; in creating new places for people to live in, such changes are simply bricks and mortar. It is the people who live here who can create a community.

Over the last 7 years, Manor House Development Trust has taken a unique approach to ensuring that the people in the area are able to take advantage of these changes to develop their community. Taking a holistic approach based on 5 simple principals, our mission has not been to dictate to residents what kind of community they should have but to provide the ’means’ by which they can control and determine the future of their area.

What real differences does ‘community development’ actually make and what are the tangible benefits of the work of Manor House Development Trust? In this report, independently verified by social impact experts CAN Invest, Kate Pierpoint shows how our approach to community development has improved local people’s lives. It provides hard evidence to demonstrate that the small behavioural changes residents have adopted as individuals and collectives have empowered them to take steps to live happier more rewarding lives.

Simon Donovan, Chief Executive Officer, Manor House Development Trust

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Evaluation Report Measuring the Impact of Manor House Development Trust 2009 - 2015

Empowering people to transform their lives Our activities are having a profound effect on the empowerment of the community and this is enabling people to do a number of things they may not have been able to do before.

This includes gaining employment, running community groups and taking ownership of their health and wellbeing.

The research tells us that the empowerment people feel and the benefits people experience as a result are significantly enhanced by the following 3 features: Opportunities for long-term engagement • People who engage with activities in the long-term are 6 times more likely to feel a greater sense of belonging.

Provision of a range of different services and activities • By attending a range of different employability activities, a person’s chances of getting a job are improved by 250%.

Opportunities to participate in group activities • Group activities encourage people to keep attending and aid the learning process, which promotes long-term behaviour change.

Perhaps the most powerful outcome is our ability to empower a person over a long period of time, enabling them to make life-long changes and transform their lives. The people who are using our services to transform their lives, suggest the combination of these three features is fundamental in enabling them to do this.

The Well London Programme was particularly successful in building individual and community capacity to take control of their own health and wellbeing, through attracting new health service providers to the area and helping to build the local voluntary sector. It proved to be an excellent example of how public health policy can be translated into effective practice.

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Executive Summary

The growth of resident-led community groups and businesses since 2009 is a significant achievement for Manor House Development Trust. We have helped to achieve this in a number of ways: • The research tells us that the provision of structured volunteering placements have been fundamental to the creation and legacy of new community groups.

• The offer of affordable and accessible space has enabled a large number of new service providers to come to the area.

Connecting This investigation indentified five different ways in which Manor House Development Trust is connecting people and organisations. These initiatives are having a variety of different impacts on the community: • Support for immobile people in their homes is helping to tackle fuel poverty and the illnesses associated with it. We estimate this service has created total savings of £125,300 per year.

• Long-term engagement increases the likelihood of people adopting green and healthy behaviours by up to 70%; and also helps promote different types of behaviour change at once.

• Broadening the horizons of communities and encouraging young people to open up to each other about issues that affect them.

Projects like Well London and Manor House PACT have taught us that culture, arts and food projects often provide a catalyst for connecting the community.

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Evaluation Report Measuring the Impact of Manor House Development Trust 2009 - 2015

into a pop-up cafe and arts space; and the patio into an edible garden, residents can Manor House Development Trust now benefit from opportunities to meet, is innovative in the way it manages its appreciate art, grow, cook, share reciown space and how it influences its pes and eat together. With partners to use space. added features like free Over the years, it has WIFI, open access computused its strong relationers and a library, the centre These results reflect Manor ships with regeneration is attracting more people partners to use disused House Development Trust’s and encouraging them to space to the advantage come more frequently to lasting impact on people and of local people in a range advantage of the range of ways, promoting trainsuggest an effective approach take of activities the centre has ing and job opportunities to offer. This can only conto ensuring the legacy of and transforming local tribute to greater impact in green spaces into areas its work. The Redmond helping transform people’s to be enjoyed by the Community Centre clearly plays lives in the future. community. a pivotal role as a trusted hub of The PACT programme The Redmond has made great strides in community activity, being able making Community Centre is a better use of local hub of community activto offer a wide range of services green spaces by running ity, host to an extensive wildlife and foraging walks, range of activities and ser- which respond to local need, as training courses and festivices and a trusted place well as connecting people up to vals. We are already seefor residents to access ing the impact of this where other local services. those services. As Maggie people are taking owndescribes, coming to the ership of these activities, centre is like seeing her running the Hidden River family. The centre is doing Festival, volunteering to keep spaces well to diversify the range of services resclean and running community groups to idents can access by creating permanent manage green spaces. features. By transforming the reception

Making better use of space

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About Us Manor House Development Trust is a charitable

social enterprise based in the London Borough of Hackney.

We deliver and help other organisations to deliver community services which are value for money and create lasting benefits.

This approach allows the community to lead and determine its own future.

We believe our approach can bring value to other UK communities. Therefore, we are replicating and expanding our work beyond Hackney and influencing decision-makers to adopt our approach.

We are a resident-led organisation, with a resident majority on our Board of Trustees. We are also a registered Social Enterprise Mark holder. We were formed by Hackney Council in 2007 as the lead for community development on the Woodberry Down Regeneration Scheme. Since then we have evolved into a fully independent Charity, delivering successful community development programmes around: • Health & wellbeing • Community resilience to climate change • Tackling long-term unemployment • Arts & creativity

Our Business Objectives We are achieving our mission by working towards

five strategic objectives, which we believe are an essential mix to community development which local people can take ownership of.

1. EMPOWERING

so that people feel empowered to be able to do something they were not able to do before. We do this by: • • Providing training, resources and finance to local people and community groups

2. CONNECTING PEOPLE & ORGANISATIONS

so that Too many organisations with similar objectives, whether from the public, private and voluntary sectors, work in isolation. Manor House Development Trust aims to provide the practical means by which organisations can work better together, and local people have improved access to the resources they need to improve their quality of life.

3. CREATING THE SPACE Safe, accessible space is essential to the delivery of community services. Not only does MHDT own and manage space, we also seek to influence others in providing spaces in a way which is open, transparent and with clear and measurable community benefit.

4. INFLUENCING THE POWERFUL

who make policy and plans which affect our community.

5. A ROBUST & SUSTAINABLE ORGANISATION We run a sustainable organisation by diversifying income streams; employing a dedicated team; and embracing Core Values of Collaboration, Holisticworking and Innovation.

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Evaluation Report Measuring the Impact of Manor House Development Trust 2009 - 2015

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To Extentare arewe weEmpowering Empowering People?

To What Extent People?

Defining empowerment Subjective outcomes are hard to define, which makes it challenging to work out how to measure them. The concept of ‘empowerment’ is especially so, as there is no commonly accepted definition. By engaging with focus groups, we were able to explore what it meant (if anything) to our beneficiaries and then adopt this definition within the organisation.

6 focus groups of around 8 people who had taken part in MHDT’s various activities were asked what they experienced and whether they gained anything as a result. These activities included a knitting group, a community meal, a walking group, home energy advice, vocational training and careers advice.

The word cloud below illustrates the most frequently used words expressed by the focus group participants. It shows that learning something new; gaining friendships; feeling empowered; and building confidence were the most commonly felt experiences.

Samples of responses include: “By gaining more friends, I feel empowered to explore my local area”

“By learning new skills, I feel empowered to start up my own ” business”

“By increasing my confidence in speaking English, I feel empowered to help my children with their homework and talk to my family more”

“By learning new skills, I feel empowered to go to a job interview”

“By feeling part of the community more, I feel empowered to try to influence local decisions

What all the responses had in common was a feeling that something positive had changed, which had led the person to be able to do something they were not able to do before.

Indicators of empowerment The responses of the focus groups helped to identify some common positive changes they all felt had led to them feeling empowered. A good starting point to measuring to what extent Manor House Development Trust has empowered people, is to measure these indicators for empowerment.

Theory of Change Map Figure 1: Word Cloud Nearly everyone who took part in the focus groups said they had felt ‘empowered’ in some way. A wide range of different experiences of ‘empowerment’ were recorded. However, when asked in what way the feeling of empowerment had benefited them, a clear definition emerged.

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Evaluation Report Measuring the Impact of Manor House Development Trust 2009 - 2015

Indicators of empowerment: Gaining friendships Feeling a greater sense of belonging Gain new skills

The responses of the focus groups helped to map out a journey for what positive changes people said led them to feel empowered; and then what happened as a result of feeling empowered (figure 2). The full map can be found in the Appendix. A valuable aspect of this exercise was to record people’s experiences using the words they use, rather than buzz

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To What Extent are we Empowering People?

terms. The language used by the focus groups was drawn on to create the map.

Providing volunteer placements and incentives for people to volunteer and stay involved in the activity

Gain new friendship s

Attending an MHDT activity

Feel a greater sense of belonging Greater Gain new skills and knowledge

A person feels empowered to pursue job opportunities

A person is more likely to stay involoved in the activity

A person is more likely to take action on their new knowledge

A person is more

A person feels empowered to help run activities

Communit y groups are more likely to be sustaine d

A person is more likelyto make changes to their behaviour in the long-term

A person is more likely to adopt greener behaviours

A person feels more able to adopt healthier behaviours

Empowerng a person to do something they were not abele to do before

Data Analysis In order to measure to what extent Manor House Development Trust’s beneficiaries have experienced the indicators of empowerment, a survey was designed to ask participants a series of questions. The survey was completed by 99 respondents who had attended any number of a range of activities (see Methodology section).

Figure 3: Bar graph showing survey results for those who agreed or disagreed that they had experienced a number of changes as a result of attending any of Manor House Development Trust’s events or activities

As a result of attending any of our events or activities, do you agree or disagree that you… ?

Feel like you belong to your community more

59%

20.5%2

0.5%

59%

20.5%2

0.5%

employment

Figure 2: Theory of Change map - Empowering Another crucial point raised by the focus groups was the concept of ‘sustained empowerment’; that participants have felt empowered over a prolonged period of time and this has encouraged them to keep going to the activities and keep benefiting. This virtuous circle between ongoing involvement and empowerment leads to feelings of ‘sustained empowerment’.

Made new friends

Gained new skills or knowledge

69%

0%

20%

40%

15.5% 15.5%

60%

80%

100%

Hypothesis The more a person feels empowered by an activity, the more likely they are to stay involved in the activity; and the longer they stay involved the more likely they are to feel empowered and experience positive changes as a result of feeling empowered.

This hypothesis has important implications what this can enable a person to achieve (and keep achieving) in the longterm. This report will test the hypothesis to analyse the impact of long-term involvement on people’s experiences.

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Evaluation Report Measuring the Impact of Manor House Development Trust 2009 - 2015

The results show that the majority of people agreed that they had made new friends; gained new skills or knowledge; or feel like they belong more to their community. However, a large proportion (over 40%) disagreed or neither agreed nor disagreed.

The data was analysed further.

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Conclusion 1.

To What Extent are we Connecting People & Organisations?

Defining Connecting

We are empowering people to take control of their health & wellbeing Wellbeing and empowerment have similar definitions

when you compare New Economic Foundation’s 5 Ways to Wellbeing with the case studies and the focus groups. The difference seems to be that empowerment is the change enabling someone to take action; and wellbeing is the benefit a person experiences as a result of that action.

Taking action will not always result in greater wellbeing, ie getting a job, but the two are very inter-connected. For example, the FRC Group asked their beneficiaries how much they value empowerment compared to the value of getting a job, which gave them a value of 40%. This helps us to value the importance of our impact on empowering people to find work.

Manor House PACT No one who attended PACT Walks disagreed they had experienced the 6 indicators of wellbeing as set by NEF, indicating the significant impact PACT is having on people’s wellbeing.

PACT has begun to measure wellbeing in this way across all its activities, which will be interesting to analyse at a later stage.

PACT is also generating substantial benefits for the community in more specific ways, explored later in this report.

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Manor House Development Trust defines ‘connect-

ing’ in the following way as part of its Business Plan:

CONNECTING PEOPLE & ORGANISATIONS Too many organisations with similar objectives, whether from the public, private and voluntary sectors, work in isolation. Manor House Development Trust aims to provide the practical means by which organisations can work better together, and local people have improved access to the resources they need to improve their quality of life.

We do this by: • Attracting investment into the area through collaborative funding bids

Well London

• Managing community programmes which uphold this aim

Well London was successful in building individual and community capacity to take control of their own health and wellbeing, through attracting new health service providers to the area and helping to build the local voluntary sector. The programme identified a lack of sense of community and pride of place as being barriers to promoting health and wellbeing. By transforming local green spaces and building community cohesion, the project achieved long-term outcomes for the wellbeing of the Woodberry Down community. Well London has also taught us that culture, arts and food projects often provide a catalyst for connecting the community.

• Seeking out expertise from local organisations to deliver services

Evaluation Report Measuring the Impact of Manor House Development Trust 2009 - 2015

• Managing The Redmond Community Centre as hub of community activity For the purpose of this investigation, ‘connecting’ needs to be defined more precisely. As a result of analysing the organisation’s projects, a number of forms of connecting activities emerged, distinct because of the different outcomes they are creating. For the purpose of this investigation, these forms of connecting are:

1. Improving access to resources and services for isolated groups: a.

Supporting isolated people in their homes

he PACT Home Visits scheme specifically tarT gets fuel poor households in which to offer energy advice, support and equipment to help people

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To What Extent are we Connecting People & Organisations?

reduce their energy use and energy bills. The activity targets people in their homes, in order to tackle fuel poverty for immobile residents who are not able to access support outside the home. b.

Integration of the ex-armed forces

Half the Battle is an East London initiative, which targets the ex-armed forces to reintegrate them into community life. The aim of the project is to help them to build trust, enabling them to access the services they need, but also to give something back to their community.

3. Structured initiatives enabling people to stay involved in the long-term

5. A trusted community space people can come to:

The Redmond Community Centre

The Redmond Community Centre offers a permanent, safe, accessible space for the community to use and connect to a wide range of different activities and services.

The space brings people and organisations together by hosting regular group activities, acting as a community hub where people can meet and attracts new services to their area for people to enjoy. The centre will be explored under the section on how we are using space to benefit the community, but it is important to note the connecting function it offers.

Manor House Development Trust runs a number of programmes which offer opportunities to be involved over long periods of time. This may be in the form of training courses, volunteer placements, or regular activities which are sustained. It is important to make this distinction in defining different types of connection, as the feedback from focus groups very frequently says it is the regular and long-term nature of our activities which is most important; as it allows people to benefit in the long-term.

4. Building connections with other communities

As part of our Volunteering Programme, an exchange trip was organised for the Edge Youth Hub on the Woodberry Down estate to visit another youth club in Northern Ireland.

With the two areas both having a history of gang culture and high youth crime, the aim of the project is to encourage the young people to share their experiences and learn from each other. It is hoped this will raise the aspirations of the young people and discourage them from the prevalent gang culture. We also run a number of very affordable community trips every year, to broaden horizons and enjoy other parts of the UK.

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Evaluation Report Measuring the Impact of Manor House Development Trust 2009 - 2015

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