Five years ago on 25th February 2017, the Millside Centre opened its doors to the public. We are so blessed and privileged to still be here five years on, continuing to serve the needs of the most vulnerable and to offer activities, sessions and projects that give people hope so they can improve their lives for good. It is a real honour to be a place of sanctuary for many in our city and to celebrate this milestone; we are launching a few fundraising plans in the coming months.
Did you catch our knitting group on BBC Look North last month? The Look North team captured our Knitting Group ladies’ recent project making amazing winter warmers for the new Afghan refugee children in Bradford. Check out the link below to watch the short feature. If anyone would like to donate wool to our knitting group, please email us on info@millsidecentre.org
Our #MillsideHero of 2021 is awarded to Stef, our amazing Youth Engagement Officer who worked tirelessly and with so much passion and dedication to organise and deliver fun, relevant and engaging sessions for our youth from outdoor sports activities, trips to Yorkshire Dales and taking them out to the cinema, bowling and ice-skating too. She accomplished all this while doing a full time Master’s degree in Drama Therapy and juggling so many other responsibilities and has been a real beacon of light and positivity for those who needed it most. We are sad to announce that this project has ended, but we organised a lovely Christmas party to celebrate all that Stef and our volunteer Nathan achieved in the last 18 months and want to honour Stef for all her hard work and wish her all the best in her future endeavours. We have no doubt that her future ahead will be bright.
We are looking for someone to take on the role of Millside Centre Host, welcoming our partners and service users during evenings and at weekends.
There are a number of groups interested in hiring our rooms for training, workshops and meetings outside normal working hours, so we are seeking a self-motivated person who is friendly, enthusiastic and dependable, and who would be willing to be trained to use our facilities and assist clients.
Our Job Club finally resumed to in-person sessions n October and we are so thrilled to be able to provide vital support for our service users who are currently unemployed and desperately actively looking for work opportunities.
We are so pleased to be working in partnership with AROUK, the Rohingya organisation based in Bradford supporting Rohingya refugees. Did you know that Bradford has one of the largest Rohingya communities in Europe? Many of them came to Bradford as part of the Resettlement project through UNHCR and Home Office to give them a new chance and sense of dignity back and over the last 10 years, they have become an established group in the city of Bradford.
Our Welcome Café recently opened up again to the public and we are now welcoming customers for a sit-down lunch as well as offering takeaway options too. We are thrilled to have a new cohort of students on the course who are so keen to learn catering skills and serve old and new customers.
The Tenx9 Bradford storytelling sessions are now back at Millside, every first Friday of the month, where storytellers have up to 10 minutes to tell a real story from their lives on a particular theme. Come along to find out more or be a listener for others.
Members of our youth group and Millside staff recently took part in the Bradford Dragon Boat Festival at Roberts Park, Saltaire, raising much-needed funds for Hope Housing. They paddled their way to fifth place out of eight teams who took part on that sunny September Sunday and had an amazing time together. If you’d like to make a donation to Hope Housing for their incredible work and vision to end homelessness in Bradford, please click the link to their Just Giving page below.
https://www.justgiving.com/campaign/HopeHousingDragons
We are extremely delighted to announce that we have recently received an incredibly generous grant from the Morrisons Foundation to start our ‘Fit for Life’ project, which will include physical activities and nutrition sessions to promote better health and wellbeing in our community. The funding lasts for 2 years, and our passion is to play a role in reducing high rates of obesity and diabetes in our local area and giving local people the opportunity to prioritise their health and make longer lasting changes as they choose to be fit (and healthy) for life. Read the full article in the T&A link below.
