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Community Campus '87 provides a range of complementary services primarily across the Tees Valley working with homeless people, primarily young homeless people and others who are economically and/or socially disadvantaged.
Working with the Supporting People teams in Middlesbrough and Stockton, Community Campus '87 provides supported housing and floating support services in Middlesbrough for young homeless people, often including young parents and people with a range of related problems and issues.
In Stockton, working with the Drugs Action Team the Get Moving Project provides support and advice to Drugs Action Team clients to enable them to access accommodation in the private and social housing sector.
The Youth Project works with young people, primarily young homeless people, to build confidence, raise self-esteem and develop valuable life and employability skills. The Youth Project works with a variety of partners, offering young people a range of engaging, personal development and volunteering opportunities. The Youth Project has successfully delivered contracts for Job Centre Plus, is host to the Fair Share Volunteering project, manages the "Gapper" training programme, has worked on an outreach basis with young homeless people and has developed the Community Allotment project in Middlesbrough providing vocational learning and skills development opportunities.
Construction, Training and Building Services
Building on the success of the initial Key Skills project, Community Campus '87, working with Hartlepool New Deal for Communities (NDC) and Hartlepool Revival deliver the "Opening Doors" project, providing construction based training for NDC residents through the refurbishment of houses and community buildings in the local community.
The Key Skills project has delivered projects for the local strategic partnerships in both Middlesbrough and Stockton to renovate and re-develop empty properties up to and above the decent home standard, providing construction training for disadvantaged people and upon completion housing for young homeless people. Additionally it has successfully delivered the "Introduction to Construction" programme for the Job Centre Plus in Hartlepool, Middlesbrough and Stockton.
The Key Skills project also provides building services for a range of customers in the voluntary sector, enabling trainees to work in a more customer led environment and Community Campus Trading Ltd provides construction building services for customers in the private and public sectors.
As part of the organisations development strategy we secured resources in 1999/2000 for the purchase of a derelict nightclub in the centre of Stockton, the name of the nightclub was Heaven, hence the title of the project. The nightclub had been closed for several years and was in a state of substantial dilapidation, an eyesore and was attracting a high degree of vandalism.
The organisation raised every penny to buy the building, covered the renovation through further donations and in kind support from a number of local and national partners the nightclub was renovated utilising the Key Skills project.
The project now provides office accommodation for the organisation, is a central hub for our work with homeless people in Stockton and incorporates a drop in, ICT room, life skills area, a workshop and meeting room.
Owning the building has expanded our asset base and made the organisations financial position more robust. The organisation leases the top floor offices out to other agencies, which in turn creates another valuable income stream for the organisation. A Henry Smith Charitable Foundation Trustee described the organisation as having a 'can do' attitude during a visit to the project.