One Community takes flight! between the years of 2008 & 9 One Community were being established. To the right is a video from Your Thurrock captured back in 2008 when One Community held their ‘Visioning Day’ where they presented their vision and objectives to Tilbury locals and members of the council alike.

In 2011 One Community held a large community event labelled as ‘Partnership event’. This was a large scale event hosted by us to bring people together, meet up with our partner organisations and allow local residents to see One Community first hand. This was the year One Community migrated from a small allocated space in the Hub to a permanent shop front location on Dock Road. VIP project was launched in 2011 also, with great reception.

2013 meant a lot of connection building and expansion for One Community. Doubling our numbers in nearly every aspect from footfall, number of enquiries, number of partner organisations and community events.

Through the LinkUp Project, we were able to carry out two events this year: a ‘picnic & chat’ on 26 June and a Family Fun Day on 19 August, attended by 35 and 243 people 4 respectively at the Koala Park in Tilbury. The Deputy Mayor also joined in the Family Fun Day.

2015 was a very successful year, with the Southend trip returning to great reception. Our numbers for footfall and enquiries were around the same as last year, with many if the same projects running. We had a revolving number of 39 volunteers who are on our Volunteer Investment Programme (VIP) who are supported to develop their skills to actively participate in their local community, and achieve their individual career and/or personal goals. We started a two year Steps to Success Project in April 2015 to work with 40 unemployed people to get them Job ready. In the first year of this project, we worked with 20 participants. From these, 12 (60%) gained paid employment, 3 (15%) started their own businesses, 2 (10%) gained confidence to return to work, 1 (5%) started a level 3 apprenticeship course in childcare, and 1 (5%) gained confidence to support their daughter who was long term depression and one started a university course and 1(5%) negotiated more hours at work with his new found confidence. Through our Steps to Success programme, we were able to broker a relationship with Travis Perkins at the London Distribution Park in Tilbury. We supported a further 32 with a crash-course in CV preparation, interview skills and help in navigating the Travis Perkins website to apply for jobs. We later received feedback that our involvement had assisted Travis Perkins in achieving their target of employing 70% local residents. A further 16 volunteers were trained to support our ‘Little things that mean a lot Project’ with the necessary skills, know-how and confidence to adequately support 120 of the most vulnerable 3 people in our community, including acting as advocates in meetings with social landlords and the Council. Out of the 120 supported 56 (46%) reported an increase in their ability to cope with everyday life challenges. The volunteers gained satisfaction from helping people through difficult times and felt empowered to respond to others’ needs. From these 16 volunteers 11 went on to paid employment.

2018 marked the year of the receipt of the Queens Award for Voluntary Service. Alongside a range of meaningful projects were pushed out in this time for the community benefit. The projects were as follows;
~Headstart to Employment —Targeting opportunities for young people aged 16-25 to go into paid employment, further training, or seeking to go onto some form of apprenticeship.
~ Volunteer Investment Programme (VlP) Evidence based skills development programme for volunteers who support the work of One Community through volunteering, and in return are supported with a personal development portfolio to help them with their career aspirations.
~ RISE Project —Targeting 18+ who are having challenges with accessing the job Market
~ Work Club and coffee mornings —Monday drop-in sessions for support with becoming job ready in order to get into paid employment.
The aforementioned projects were generally for skills development, we had some wellbeing projects too, a few notable ones are;
~TLC Project – This project with 6 peer mentors supported 30 vulnerable people, helping to alleviate their feelings of anxiety, stress and worthlessness, improving their mental wellbeing and confidence to move forward included some Therapeutic workshops for up to 20 people for 10 weeks.
~ Little Things that Mean A lot – Addressing issues that residents find hard to get help or support with, such as dealing with utility companies, debt agencies, benefit forms etc.
~ One Community is a Hate Incident Reporting Centre (HIRC) The One Community shop became a HIRC in October 2017. It also has trained volunteers and staff to collect the information to feed into Thurrock intelligence about Hate Crime in Tilbury by training as Hate Crime Ambassadors.
~ New Beginnings Members of the indigenous community engaging with residents from ethnic minority backgrounds to tell their stories of how they came into Tilbury in order to understand one another better.tc

One Community are on the Tilbury Towns board, which is important because of how close we are with the community.