Lloyds Banking Group staff help at centre for homeless and vulnerable people in Wolverhampton
Staff from Lloyds Banking Group recently spent a day at The Good Shepherd in Wolverhampton, with the aim of doing hands-on work and learning more about the organisation.
The group’s ‘Day To Make A Difference’ gives staff the opportunity to take time out from their normal day job and directly support their communities.
Colleagues from the bank’s offices in Pendeford helped with the created of a garden at The Good Shepherd.
The project, TGS, is celebrating 50 years of helping the people of Wolverhampton. It was established in 1972 by a religious order the Brothers of St John and is based in a house in the shadow of the Molineux football ground.
It helps anyone who is homeless or vulnerable, delivering services in a way that makes people feel valued and that their voices can be heard.
As well as serving up to 200 hot meals per day, the staff at TGS hand-out free food parcels, help their service users find accommodation, and help with arranging check-ups from doctors and dentists.
Sarah Holyhead, one of the Lloyds Banking Group’s staff members attending, said: “It’s humbling to be here and see how many people TGS support each day. It felt good to come and help, even if only in the small way that we did.”
The rain-soaked weather put paid to plans for the visitors to paint exterior railings. Instead they converted wooden pallets into herb-growing trays, levelled gravel on a newly-created garden and rubbed down the metal railings, ready for them to be painted on a better day.
It was help that was greatly appreciated by the staff at TGS, who said that they hadn’t had any other companies offer assistance in this way in the past 12 months. As well as undertaking the manual work, the visitors were given a tour of the facilities and shown how art is being used to help service users deal with their issues.
Visiting the organisation was certainly an eye-opening experience for the Lloyds Banking Group staff.
Carly Derham said: “You think it could never happen to you, that you would never be in a situation like this. But all it takes is a series of unfortunate events and any of us could be there, helpless and vulnerable. Coming here today made me appreciate how lucky I am to have the life I have and it also fired all of us to come back and help again. It is a fantastic project that deserves our ongoing support.”
Chris Manley, who works for TGS as a volunteer, explained how art was helping to give those who used the project's services a voice.
He said: “One guy, who had lived on the streets for a long time, was very reluctant to try painting, but once he did he loved it. When I saw his work, saw the red figure he had painted surrounded by chaos, I told him that he had put his ten years of experiences of living on the streets into a painting.”
Art at TGS was recently the focus of an immersive art exhibition and tour which aimed to let visitors see exactly what the centre does, speak to service users and view examples of the art they have created. As part of the immersion, anyone attending had to queue outside to get in – mirroring the daily queuing that service users do for a hot meal.