Thursday 25 June 2015

Living Streets

Jo Elkington, Development Manager of Living Streets is wanting to connect with local organisations and community groups and has asked for an email introduction to members of the Health, Social Care & Wellbeing Forum as she is interested in talking to organisations that are working on active lifestyles, health and wellbeing with communities in Merthyr Tydfil.
 
Living Streets, the national charity that promotes walking and walkable streets, is at the initial stages of developing a programme in Wales and are keen to meet organisations with similar objectives within the health and wellbeing agenda to inform our work.
 
Are you:
o   Already doing work in this area?
o   Interested in walking-related opportunities for your service users?
o   Willing to share best practice?
o   Interested in talking to Living Streets to find out more about what we do?
 
About Living Streets
Living Streets is the national charity that stands up for pedestrians. At present we are delivering projects in England and Scotland; working in Wales will be new for us. We encourage people to walk, and we work to create safe, attractive, enjoyable streets where it’s great to walk. Our work involves both campaigning and policy advocacy, and delivering projects across our three key theme areas of Communities, Workplaces and Schools. Our Communities work aims to improve the local street environment and encourage more people to walk regularly:
 
Improving the local street environment
This starts with learning about local communities and why people do not make everyday journeys on foot. our ‘Community Street Audit’ approach supports communities as they identify the issues in their local built environment that prevent them from walking, and supports them in devising solutions. Audit evidence can be used to inform investment in the local area to make improvements identified by the community themselves. The process also encourages volunteer action and intergenerational cooperation.
 
Encouraging more people to walk
This is about encouraging people to increase their everyday walking, and helping them to form a walking habit. As well as obvious benefits like physical fitness, walking can be beneficial for a range of health conditions, improved mental health, increased confidence, greater independence and reduced social isolation
 
I attach a couple of leaflets which tell you what we are about with examples of our work – the first attachment is a 2-page summary of a project we delivered with communities across England and the second attachment comes from a project we delivered with older people in Yorkshire.
 
If you are interested in finding out more about Living Streets, are already doing work in this area, or would like to get involved in some way, then Jo would love to hear from you.
 
phone:        07525807423
skype:        ls.joanna.elkington
email:        
joanna.elkington@livingstreets.org.uk   web:           www.livingstreets.org.uk
twitter:       
@livingstreets

No comments:

Post a Comment