6.00-9.30 – hearty soups and food/drink for sale – raising money for Ilford night shelter
1st hour skills swap 6.45-7.45
2nd hour skills swap 8-9
Food, drink, conversation, laughter
FIRST SESSION 6.45
Painting for well being with Ghazala Navaid
Accounting and your self assessments – Amanda Simpson
How to grow a winter garden – Kathy Mason of Plantastic
Internet safety for you by Dee Datta of ASNET and their work on internet support for elderly/vulnerable
Making cheese and food non-wasting tips – Habiba Ahmed of Amey
Christmas crafts for kids – Indu Barot
Community buildings: save energy to save money. Peter Musgrave of Vine Church
SECOND SESSION 8pm
All about blogging – Alan Howe of Barkingside 21
How to cook a great pilau rice – Shilpa Patel
Bollywood dancing with D Style dance!
Climate change mitigation: what you can do about it. SabeshRajagopalan of Ilford Transition Town (previously Senior environment education officer, Indian Ministry for Environment)
Financial and wealth management – Jay Bhatt
Twitter – Ros
What a fabulous line-up and there could be spontaneous offers on the night! 🙂
We had a fabulous evening on Wednesday 9th November in two sittings.
What was the value? 12 people offered their skills on the night and for most of them it was in itself a useful opportunity for experience or confidence or market research. Zeena (temporarily out of work) offered help with CV’s and Linked In, Amal (local business) offered help with accounts, Jitendra (start up business) ran a sessin on how to have solar lighting in your home, Farhana (start up business) showed people how to make cup cakes, Ruth (local community project) ran a conflict resolution intro workshop, Terese (start-up social enterprise) ran a hair plaiting workshop, Habiba from the Council recycling team ran an upcycling crafts workshop, Nnenna (local business and accoutnatn) ran a workshop on lowering your businesses carbon footprint, Indu and Meenakshi (local residents) showed people how to make a chick pea curry and chapati, Richard (retired) showed 2 people how to buy and sell on Ebay, and Apellonia (local mental health community group) shared a personal account of living with a mental health condition.
Indu: ‘I did not realise that people would be interested in learning how to make a chick pea curry. It was such fun. I brought my friend along to help as I have never done anything like this before. They really enjoyed it – there were 8 people. I am happy that I can encourage people to cook vegetarian food as I am a Hindu. It was good experience for me. I am going to help organise a skills swap at Redbridge Institute and get parents to come from Gearies School which is next door and where my children go. I think the Timebank is a great idea. I think the parents in the school will not realise that other people can help them and that they have something to give.
Ruth Pearson ‘ I had 2 really great sessions. Firstly Amal helped me to plan both finances and to work out the legal structure for a social enterprise I want to start. And then I had a session with Apellonia, sharing her mental health condition and the work of Run-up which is of help to me in my start-up business of wellbeing.
Cranbrook Baptist Church gave the venue free and will earn Timebank hours. They want to get help from Richard on how to buy and sell on Ebay because the church has furniture and equipment it wants to sell.
Why did Amal Simothy want to attend to offer his accounting skills? The value to me was making long term connections and giving back valuable time to local community without any expectations in return. Adding value by giving back to help aspiring business minded people prosper. Personally, I feel fulfilled by sharing the reservoir of knowledge and real life experiences I have acquired over 20 years by working hard, diligently and keeping up with the latest updates which is not always easy. Worth turning out to help people like Ruth who is hungry, passionate to make her brave move or dream a reality by running her own business and by taking charge of her life and giving back to community more than just being employed.
Why did Farhana Yousaf of Creative Bites start-up share her cup cake tips? It was nice to share my skill with some of the participants. Good to see their enthusiasm and happiness. Most important was when each one of them proudly walking around with a box of cupcakes all
decorated by them. It was 100 percent worth coming there.
Date of next Skills swap to be announced soon 🙂 Thanks to Cranbrook Baptist Church for letting us use your lovely cafe on the Timebank. We’ll try to sort out the help you want with selling some bits on Ebay soon!
The Redbridge Timebank held a new style event on Wednesday – a marketplace and trading floor which worked well. Redbridge is a happening place!
17 people attended including 5 businesses, 4 start-ups and 2 thinking of starting a business.
The trades on offer were – help to make flyers with Brian, making Kefir pro biotic with Ifty and Julie, touch meditation with Sam and CV help with Jayabalam. Trades booked in for later – Bea to help Kathy to choose the right legal format for her social enterprise, Brian to help Ros and Gladys with flyers…
We think the Timebank has enormous potential for the Redbridge economy and you are invited to our Bank meeting to review systems, business plan and events. Monday 27 March 12.30 at St Johns Church, St John’s Road, Seven Kings, IG2 7BB. Please do text /call 07707 460309 or email sevenkingstimebank@sophiahubs.com or ros.southern@sophiahubs.com if you are coming. Thanks! 🙂
For more info on the trading floor pilot, click here.
A previous skills swap – Glenda on Neuro Linguistic Programming
Our Timebank now has 100 members and we will recruit quite a few more on Monday. 🙂 This is our 10th Timebank skills exchange and we are proud to be ambassadors for the Redbridge sharing economy.
It’s at Seven Kings Library which has been given to us free of charge as it is not in use on Mondays- so the venue is part of the sharing economy too. Thanks to Vision and our contact Mina Rahman.
Monday 7th December 2015 12-3pm – please arrive by 12 for first session and 1.30 for second session. All sessions must start on time for this to work.
Session 1 – 12.15-1.15
Meditation with Liam Chai… Linked In with Martin Southern… Creative writing with Taira Khan… Excel with Amanda Simpson… Living closely with nature in an Urban setting/getting to know plants/winter gardening with Kathy and Paul Mason.
Lunch break 1.15-1.45.
Bring your packed lunch. Buy drinks from our mini pop up refreshment stall (looking for someone/a business or charity to run this)
Session 2 – 1.45-2.45
Beginners coding with Tahir Mahmud… Spanish conversation with Begona Belmonte… buying and selling on Ebay with Richard Joynson… painting with Bettina Fernandez Sleeman… creating a flyer on Word with Kim Judge… introduction to local forums – streetlife, streetbank, local Facebook groups with Ros Southern.
For a very interesting academic article about finance systems, natural eco systems and the place of Timebanks, click here.
As this space is quite tight, please will you book in advance. It may be difficult to squeeze you in if you turn up on spec. Please will you also try to register on the Timebank if you are not already a member.
For more info please email sevenkingstimebank@sophiahubs.com or ros.southern@sophiahubs.com or ring 07707 460309.
Time for another Timebank skills swap! 🙂 Book yourself a place – info at the end.
We are delighted that Redbridge libraries are letting us use Seven Kings library on a Monday when it is closed. We are going to bring together a range of ordinary folk in Redbridge to share their skills/knowledge. They will all earn a Timebank hour which they can spend another time. 🙂
Monday 7th December, 12-3pm, Seven Kings Library
So, we have the use of the library computers and will run one-to-one sessions or small group support on:
Linked In
Using excel sheets to manage your incomings and outgoings (business or personal)
Buying and selling on Ebay
How to use streetlife/streetbank and other local neighbour forums
Tips to make a decent flyer on Word
We also have offers of:
meditation session
something to do with photography
Tips on winter gardening
Stress management
Creative writing
French conversation (if you would like one-to-one in another language, just ask – it should be easy to sort that out)
We reckon we can cater for 25 people in each session although it may be a bit squashed. We would like to have current Timebank members involved and also to bring in new people to join in and also join the Timebank.
The sessions will run 12.15-1.15 and 1.30-2.30.
And as its around lunchtime, please feel free to bring and share food. We’ll have refreshments.
To book a session: email ros.southern@sophiahubs.com or sevenkingstimebank@sophiahubs.com or put a message on Facebook or text 07707 460309 . The fee: an hour of your time in return!
The Trust for London has announced that the next closing date for applications is 5pm on the 4th February 2016. The Trust are particularly interested in funding work that develops new and imaginative ways of addressing the root causes of London’s social problems. In particular the Trust wants to support work which falls under its five funding priorities. These are:
Employment
Advice
Social justice
Violence
Supporting small groups.
Each year, the Trust provide around £7 million in grants and funds around 130 community and voluntary organisations. There is no minimum or maximum size of grant and the amount you request should be the amount needed. However, the average grant will be around £75,000 over three years. The Trust will occasionally fund work to tackle poverty and inequality which falls outside the 5 priority areas.
Evening Standard Dispossessed Fund – Estates Programme (London)
The Evening Standard Dispossessed Fund – Estates Programme supports neighbourhood based projects in London’s 33 boroughs.
The aim of the fund is to build on the skills and assets that exist within local communities and to tackle need and improve the lives of residents. Resident-led community groups or charities, operating on a particular housing estate or area of housing, can apply for grants of £2,000 to £20,000 for projects that demonstrate clear evidence of benefit to residents. For larger grant requests, applicants must also demonstrate how they will provide longer term benefits for participants and greater community impact. Eligible organisations can apply for any cost related to their project, including for example:
Equipment
Insurance
Sessional staff costs
Volunteer expenses
Staff salaries, etc.
The deadline for applications is 5pm on 23rd November 2015.
Local not for profit organisations such as community groups, resident associations, community centres, social enterprises, community interest companies and credit unions; etc can apply for funding through the Comic Relief – Local Communities Fund.
The fund provides grants of between £1,000 and £10,000 for projects in areas suffering from economic and social deprivation. The fund is managed by the Community Foundation for London and is looking to support projects that enable local people to create a lasting change in their community. Projects should be run by people directly affected by the issues they are dealing with and priority will be given to small, locally based groups and organisations in areas of disadvantage that have a clear understanding of the needs of their community. Each funding round will address a different theme.
The theme for this funding round is to:
Advance people’s physical and mental health, wellbeing and safety.
The closing date for applications is 5pm on the 1st December 2015.
There are more funding streams open to social enterprises and community groups. To keep updated, email me and I can add you to my regular funding opportunity emails. ola@redbridgecvs.net
We held a very successful entrepreneur’s club at the Enterprise Desk this week in Ilford Library. We had a double bill to introduce the Echo Timebank (with Sarah Henderson) and to give an update on the Redbridge/Seven Kings Timebank.
Mike Loomey of established Barking business 3in1 is an ECHO member. He shared how he has traded on ECHO and received high quality advanced training on WordPress while giving back to the Timebank (and earning Echo’s) through giving SEO support to businesses and also loaning out his DJ equipment for an Echo event.
So our Timebank and Echo are related. We use their system and so all start-ups/businesses on our Timebank can access and trade with the 2000 London businesses in the network. 🙂 But it is much, much better if you join BOTH Timebanks, so you get the flow of info and support from both.
Session attended by 2 established businesses, Lynne and Andrzej of community group Ubuntu Arts, 5 start-ups and 2 people thinking of starting a business.
The Enterprise Desk is a great space and so we will try out two more evening entrepreneur’s club sessions: Wednesday 4th November, Thursday 3rd December. Speaker/topic not yet confirmed but will be 5.30-7.30.
Jitendra Makvana is a start-up business having recently obtained the patent for his ambient LED light invention. He went to the show last year and thought it was amazing. He recommends all start-ups to go along but that it is so vast that you really need to study the programme and plan out your day.
For anyone with an interest in a business it is a must. There are lots of seminars, workshops and exhibitions and wide range of good books. I’m definitely going again this year – there’s so much to see and to do.
Jitendra is a regular attender at our entrepreneur’s club and it’s interesting to hear how his business plans have progressed over the last year. Jitendra takes any opportunity he can to learn (hence this recommendation) and always finds the Timebank skills swap events helpful for his business – click here to see the latest one.
Suggestion for Social Saturday – 10th October 2015…. Celebrate Redbridge social enterprise and green business Ilford Recycles. They rennovate discarded bikes and then sell them at a bike sale every 2nd Saturday of the month 12-2pm.
You can also pay a visit on Mondays and Fridays to see them working and look through the stock. You can also regularly check stock on the website http://recycles-ilford.co.uk/our-latest-bikes/
Fantastic turnout tonight, great speeches and networking! See the video of Jas Athwal, leader of Redbridge Council, opening the Enterprise Desk, the new Redbridge business hub. Emma Jones of Enterprise Nation was keynote speaker and East London radio interviewed her afterwards. That will be online soon.
And to top it all – access 24 hours a day, 7 days a week to the excellent business database COBRA. This has been financed by the Redbridge business hub – you just need your library card number on this website http://redbridge.cobwebinfo.com.
If you want help using Cobra, please get in touch. We’ll be setting up some sessions in how to use it. This is an amazing business resource 🙂
Why did Farhana Yousaf of 
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Sophia Hubs Redbridge 07707 460309 