Commonside D19: Team Blog

I was lucky to meet three wonderful women who were client volunteers who help exclusively with the Step Forward programme which provides advice to clients, who spoke with me about their time as a client. Due to her physical impairments, they had all lost benefits for a while and during that time, Commonside provided help for them. One woman was adamant about the fact that if Commonside had not been a resource for her, she would probably not be alive. We spoke as a group to Commonside's "greatest success story". Similarly to the other woman, this man had hit a rough patch and his benefits were reduced. He said he became incredibly depressed and also said that if Commonside's services were not available, he would not be here today. Speaking to these people, their stories struck me and emphasized the value and importance of our project. I cannot stress how excited I am to talk to other clients and learn their stories. - Emily

Over this last week, we've been able to meet so many great people at Commonside. The staff and the clients are all so friendly and are all willing to talk and help us out. We've been lucky and have already made some connections with the clients. Noel is helping Yosief (Seber) with his Wordpress website. Also, in the cafe, Commonside offers free tea, coffee and biscuits. They also play music to lighten the atmosphere. Our team has made a playlist called bops heard at commonside with a playlist cover photo. We love hearing the stories of all the clients and we will do our best in these next 6 weeks to help Naomi and her team. - Commonside Team

Today at approximately 10 in the morning, we conducted our first interview for our IQP project. We were able to meet Lyla from the Merton Centre for Independent Living and ask her questions about their organization as a whole and the services they provide. Also, we were able to learn about how they acquired the Advice Quality Standard back in 2016 and how it has helped them grow as an organization. Definitely, all of the information provided to us in this one-hour interview will help us in delivering our methodology and completing our IQP.

I had made an instagram for our team at the beginning of ID2050, but we didn't use it at all throughout the term (partly cause it immediately got disabled and I had to submit an appeal to get it back). However, now that we are in beautiful London, we are posting multiple times a day! It has been a lot of fun taking the photos, and I hope we can look back at it and have fond memories of our time with Naomi and Commonside, as well as each other. I see it as a useful supplement to this blog that people can quickly glance through to see our progress, and it's also a whole lotta fun! Follow us @lo19_commonside on instagram.com ! - Maggie

Today was our first meeting with our sponsor in East Mitcham. We arrived early and walked around the town center, checking out the local stores and public library. We were greeted by two members of the staff, Anne and Jenny, who got us settled in and set us up with coffee. The vibe in the center was very cosy and welcoming. Lunch club was just beginning and our team took some time to observe the friendly interactions between the staff and Mitcham residents before meeting Naomi and other staff members at the New Horizon Centre. We are so excited to figure out what our next seven weeks will look like!

Hooray! We finished our IQP final presentations last night and they went great! All the teams had amazing presentations. We're very proud of all the hard work we did over the last seven weeks. We are very excited to be shipping off to London. Emily will be the first to leave, a vacation in Rome! Then Noel is heading off to the icy cold in the Lapland of Sweden. Humberto will be on a flight to Iceland and hang out in the Blue Lagoon. Maggie will be meeting up with us in London! XOXO, Commonside Team