Hub: The Mount

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Show transcript

My name's David Gore, and I'm one of the community engagement team for Healthier Fleetwood. The original idea of Healthier Fleetwood was to make a difference to, to people's health and wellbeing, something as dramatic as increasing their life expectancy.

We cannot sit here and say that we are doing that. That will probably take a generation before, but that becomes apparent. What we can say is that even if one person makes contact with Healthy Fleetwood and the wider partnership, and they find something that makes them happier in their day to day, they will become healthier by the definition, and that will then have an impact on the people around them, and then that will have an impact on the community as a whole.

Yeah. When people first contact Healthier Fleetwood, sometimes they genuinely don't know what they want. They just know they want something. So we always flip it on its head a bit and say, “Well, what are your interests? Perhaps, what did you used to do when you were younger, but you fell out of love with, you know, you used to do art or sport or anything like that?” And we can generally find something for everybody.

Often here at Affinity, where we've got lots and lots of activities, we probably got about 60 activities displayed on the walls. Somebody will come in and go, “Well, I don't wanna do art, I don't wanna do sport, I don't wanna do this.” But then they'll suddenly focus on, “Oh, there's a singing group, or there's a gardening club.” And that with the one thing, you can see it in their eyes. Their eyes light up, and then when you tell 'em, it's just in case of just going down there and saying hello and getting involved. Um, and then the best thing from that is that often a couple of weeks later, somebody will pop their head in the door and say, “I went to that scene group, it's absolutely brilliant. Thank you very much for that.”

Um, and that's when you know, you, you're starting to make a difference. This is about supporting people to find ways to help themselves. Then they can come to us either in person here at our information centre at Affinity, or they can contact us online or they can meet us at any of the outdoor events that we do, and just find out about all the fantastic things that are going on and find somebody that's right for them.

That's the important thing. We don't tell people what to do. We say, :What do you want to do? Let's go and find that.” People can take ownership of their decisions that affect them and start saying, “I'm going to do something about it. I'm going to improve my lifestyle. I'm going to get more involved with the community. I'm gonna meet more people.” And that has a knock on effect.

So, the main way to find us is in person. We have an information centre at the Affinity Lancashire Shopping Centre. We're open Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, 11 till 3. We’ve got a website, heathierfleetwood.co.uk. You're on social media, Facebook and Twitter.