Volunteer It Yourself Project @ Straight Road Community Centre

This project will involve retrofit works to improve the energy-efficiency of the Community Centre. The grant will enable the delivery of a new VIY retrofit/community facility improvement project in Colchester, involving and benefitting at least 21 marginalised/excluded/disengaged who are NEET or at risk of NEET young people through local volunteer skills opportunities, including access to green skills training and accreditations.

VIY will dryline and insulate some of the poorly designed external brick walls, install new LED lighting to replace old energy-inefficient lights, build storage cupboards to reorganise a messy storage room, replace four radiators to improve heating (owing to boiler capacity), fit new worktops in the old kitchen, and redecorate the main hall and large side room - giving a much needed boost to a decades old building. Upon completion of the works, an EPC Assessor will be engaged to assess the renewed energy efficiency of the building, determine its improved EPC status and anticipated reducing heating costs.

This project will combine impact and community benefit in five areas related to the objectives of the fund: -
• Enabling as a result of the proposed improvement works, to improve, protect and maintain a public building as a public amenity
• Support protection of the environment - through helping to conserve energy, reduce reliance on energy inefficient heating systems and use less power
• Inspire more people to volunteer in the local community (including those who traditionally face barriers to such opportunities) – with associated health and wellbeing benefits. In this way, the project will also enable residents local to this space to take an active stake in their community and develop ownership and a sense of pride for local public amenities they currently (or could) use and benefit from
• Supporting hard-to-reach, unemployed and/or at risk young people to develop new vocational skills, including green skills, to boost their work-readiness and ultimately progress beyond the project towards and into further education, training, employment
• The VIY project will boost community cohesion and connectivity through inter-generational skills sharing and co-working (e.g. between young people and mentors).