By Rob Gooding, Community Organiser
This month I have had the pleasure of mentoring the newly formed Henley Residents Association. The group have formed due to the old group dissolving last month. Since then, they have organised proactive community members who want to pick up the gauntlet of supporting their local community.
The HRA plan is to reignite the community spirit through activities to improve their neighbourhood by hosting coffee mornings with board games, weekly bingo at community centre and garden projects for those who want to leave their mark on the community centre garden on Oates close. The group also want to be able to put on away days for the residents like the good old days.
RotherFed have supported the group by mentoring them through the processes of becoming a constituted group. There is a big can-do attitude towards helping the community and an equal level of commitment to becoming formalised. When I first spoke with the group they had already spoken about the roles and were being supported by a previous committee member of the old Henley Community Group. This member had been part of the previous group for over a decade and is now passing that information on to the new group.
The committee positions have already been organised, so it was just a case of supporting the group to read and understand their constitution. I’m quickly learning that if this group can do something they will do it there and then. After mentoring the group about the constitution, by the next day the constitution was written by the group and agreed to, and signed by the 4 committee members.
The next week the group went straight into the bank to begin the processes of creating a community account. That week we had formally completed their banking application and are awaiting the response of the bank to proceed. RotherFed will be there to support them with Covid guidance as a group or individual to ensure they operate safely.
This group has already had a lot of interest from the local community and the wider community of Masbrough and looks to be a great start for the community in the following months. They are patiently waiting to be able to use centres and are thinking about outdoor activities in the meantime. They recognise like most of us that Covid-19 has had a huge impact in many ways and in response communities have become closer than before. With the great positive attitude the group is showing and the hard work they are applying the group seems like it will have a great impact on the local community.