Member Article

Top Club to Top Community Hub - Active Families Comes To Washington

Active Families is helping to rejuvenate The Top Club Gentleman’s Club in Usworth, Washington after securing almost £20k funding to regenerate the space as a community wellbeing hub.

The innovative community organisation, which has recruited an additional six members of staff within the last 12 months, received £9k from the National Lottery’s Awards for All, £6.5k from Sport England’s Together Fund allocated by Rise North East and £3.4k from Sunderland City Council towards their projects.

The funding will allow Active Families to train additional staff, offer a full programme of exercise and wellbeing classes for all ages and also introduce an eight-week ‘Mission 2 Mobility’ falls prevention course.

Kelly Brougham, Director at Active Families North East, said: “We’re so excited to be expanding our offering even further and offering another community the chance to get active, feel good and make healthy choices, no matter what age they are.

“Most recently, we held a Jamboree at The Top Club to celebrate the Jubilee weekend and we couldn’t believe it when over 300 people showed up, a number of which have already started to engage in our classes.

“We’ve got a fantastic programme of activities including family boxercise, line dancing, active toddlers classes, after school provision and of course our popular seated

exercise classes for older adults - our aim is to provide a healthy activity for every age group. This of course is on top of other community initiatives and courses we’ll be running over the coming months.“

Active Families hopes to engage with over 10,000 households over the next 12 months and will also be working with Bethshan Church, owners of The Top Club, to create a community cafe full of fresh produce and affordable meals for families to enjoy.

Kelly added: “If anyone is interested in taking part in our activities, they can keep up-to- date through our Facebook page, website, or even just by popping into The Top Club.”

In addition to the organisation’s expansion, the team is still travelling around Sunderland in its innovative ‘Well Bean Machine’, taking health and social activities to people’s front doors in the area.

The scheme is already helping a minimum of 500 people each month and has been so successful that the team is in talks about rolling it out further around the country.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Active Families North East .