Due to our amazing growth, NT LIFE Recovery College has started 2022 with a move to a new location at Meadow Well Connected.
Since we began in September 2019, NT LIFE has been delivering a programme of courses, workshops and meetings to support and promote the mental health and wellness of adults in our community. We have done this through the enthusiasm and commitment of a team of volunteers and lead worker who have shared their lived experience, skills, information and provided a range of activities maintaining upwards of 12 different activities on a weekly basis.
In 2021 we welcomed an additional part time key worker Alice Holliday; who has added to the broad range of courses on offer, with 3 amazing rounds of our Woodland Wellness programmes and a Vegetarian Cooking programme. Feedback was amazing and instrumental in our wanting to do more activities outside of the centre
Alice has used her skills and knowledge to not only facilitate these courses but develop volunteer co-facilitators for them too. Well done Alice and thank you for continuing to uphold our belief in the proverb “Give a person a fish you let them eat for one meal, teach a person to fish, you can feed them for life, teach a person to teach a person to fish you feed a community”
Our provision of service continued through the pandemic and as a result we were nominated and short listed, both as an organisation and Ali the Senior Worker, as an individual for the contribution to the Mental Health and Wellbeing sector. Read more here about this amazing achievement.
All of this has been made possible with the collaboration of the fabulous team of staff at The Linskill Centre, which has been our base. They have supported us and welcomed our participants and our gratitude is enormous.
It therefore is with some regret that our success and growth has meant we’ve outgrown the space. We would like to take this opportunity to thank the Linskill Centre staff for their outstanding support, made all the more special by the warmth and flexibility we received.
Whilst we are sad to have left the Linskill, we are excited by the prospects of being at Meadow Well Connected, enabling us to forge even more connections in the community and with other nearby organisations.
Anybody interested in participating either as a student, volunteer or co-creator please email Ali (ali.donkin@voda.org.uk) or Alice (alice.holliday@voda.org.uk)
Our inspiration comes from the many achievements of our participants who have been successful in creating change in their own lives: taking on volunteering roles, running their own groups, gaining qualifications, gaining employment, but most importantly gaining a sense of personal empowerment; everyone who turns up in spite of their personal challenges is a success story.
Whilst there are so many to congratulate it is with a great sense of pride that we do congratulate Jess Shaw on becoming the newest member to the VODA team as a worker with The Young Peoples Discovery College.
Jess has been a participant and volunteer facilitator with NT LIFE, (which we hope continues) and we all wish her every success in this new venture. We know she has been instrumental in supporting and empowering our participants and we can only imagine how amazing she will be with the young people in our community.
So to 2022:
The move to Meadow Well Connected has meant that there has been a break in deliveries.
Alice and Ali have been setting up the new premises to ensure we continue to offer a warm and welcoming, ‘Safe Space’.
Once completed, being at Meadow Well Connected will allow us to develop our services and community, empowering our participants into a ‘Brave Space’ by increasing our activities within the community.
As always we want to do this co-productively which means your voice, input and participation matter. We encourage people to get in touch, initially by email or by completing the Expression of Interest form at the bottom of this webpage.
We will also be holding drop-ins in the last week of January if you would like to come and see our new home and find out more about NT LIFE – to register your interest please contact Alice (alice.holliday@voda.org.uk) or Ali (ali.donkin@voda.org.uk).
