Get Involved

Opportunities at BridgeLink Centre

There are a number of ways you can contribute to BridgeLink Centre’s community involvement. We are always hugely grateful to anyone who donates their time or money – it’s what keeps us going!

If you would like to learn about how you could help, please see below for the many ways we welcome outside assistance.

Volunteers

Thank you for your interest in becoming a volunteer

We have a wonderful team of volunteers at the Centre who all work hard to ensure we deliver the very best services to our community. If you have some time to spare and are interested in joining our team, we would love to hear from you. For all of our volunteers, DBS can be provided if required.

Please take a look at the list of positions we have available below and contact us to learn more.

How You Can Volunteer

We are looking for volunteers to help in our Community Pantry store. You will help take deliveries and update and monitor stock.

Full training will be provided.

Usually Tuesday and Wednesday mornings though, this is flexible.

We are also looking for volunteers to support our Community Pantry’s day to day operations, arranging stock and setting up for the pantry, help with teas and coffees and a warm welcoming face for shoppers.

We run our pantry every Thursday from 9am to 2pm and we can provide time slots if people cannot give up the whole of this time so, volunteers choose when they start and finish.

Do you have good IT skills? Do you think you could help someone fill out an online form, or show them how to get the most out of their digital device? Or you could offer support with updating our systems and connections?

Our Sky IT Café currently runs on the 1st and 3rd Wednesday a month providing a friendly relaxed environment in our café for people who need digital support.

We also offer a welcoming free refreshment and access to our laptops and iPads.

We set up, run the drop in and clear up between 9am until 12pm.

Perhaps you have green fingers and could help set up a Community Garden?

We have a lovely garden which opens up from our café with several raised beds for planting, a bench and grassed area.

We would love for locals to get involved in developing this area, the raised beds need some attention and the garden needs weeding and following this we would love to create a garden run by locals for the locals, where they can plant and cultivate.

Days and times are flexible.

Trustees

Could you be a Trustee for our Charity IvybridgeLink?

IvybridgeLink, the charity for the BridgeLink Community Centre in Isleworth, is looking for people to become trustees.

Do you have:

  • An interest in the local area and an understanding of the needs of local people
  • Some time to meet with our staff & volunteers
  • Useful skills and background to support the growth and development of the charity

The BridgeLink Centre is a vibrant, successful community centre at the heart of Ivybridge estate. We partner with a wide range of organisations including Sky, The National Lottery, Henry Smith Foundation, Brentford FC Community Sport Trust, and the NHS to host and deliver a wide range of activities.

The centre has a wide ranging children and young people’s offer including youth activities, homework clubs, holiday programmes and a nursery, along with drop-in advice services, a community pantry and support groups.

As a Trustee you’d be expected to:

  • Have a passion for social justice and supporting under-represented groups
  • Promote the community centre and represent IvybridgeLink charity
  • Help scrutinise accounts, set policies and attend monthly online meetings
  • Support the centre’s management team to deliver projects and run events

Vacancies at BridgeLink Centre

Roles at BridgeLink Centre

There are no current vacancies at BridgeLink Centre.

Sponsorship

Thank you for your interest in our sponsorship opportunities

You will find a list below of the various ways in which you can support us in our core programmes here at BridgeLink Centre. If you are able to help us with any of these opportunities, we’d be delighted to hear from you.

Opportunities

Children supported through BridgeLink children and youth offer in 2024
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We provide 4 weekly free youth clubs for young people aged 8 to 16 and a Young Leaders programme for 14-18 year olds. We also provide free holiday activities offering positive activities in a safe environment to gain new skills and experience.

Your support could help us provide more for young people through arts and crafts, multi sports, team games, multimedia, drama and targeted workshops such as on community safety, life skills or wellbeing.

These take place every half term providing free positive activities for young people aged 8-18 to engage in including workshops such as drama, mixed martial arts, cooking, visual art, music making and multimedia, and outdoor activities with partner organisations such as LGOAL, BFCCST and OT.

We run short courses in multimedia, drama or creative arts working with partners such as OT and local artists and authors. You could support us to deliver specialist projects and courses such as life saving skills, theatre production and performance, or setting up a podcast run by young people for young people.

Households helped in the last 3 years
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In 2021, IvybridgeLink Charity launched a weekly Community Pantry.

The pantry model offers an alternative solution to food insecurity based on a membership scheme whereby members sign up and pay £5.00 for a weekly shop of a minimum of 15 items including toiletries, cleaning products, baby supplies as well as food. Therefore, receiving more value for money and removing the stigma of asking for handouts that other models such as food banks may hold.

The pantry targets those most in need, i.e. those on low income or in financial debt who may be struggling with the cost of living crisis and may not be able to afford their weekly shop. With rising cost of living and inflation increases this is a more sustainable model for food insecurity and offers a sense of self worth and financial confidence to its members.

They choose what they need from a shopping list and this gives them some agency back at a time when they may find themselves with limited access to choices.

The membership forms enable us to assess their eligibility and provide them with the most appropriate support. Our Community Pantry offers more of a wrap around service as we also have Hounslow Council’s Community Hubs team in who offer a drop in advice service each week. This is complimented with other advice and guidance services each week from Citizens Advice, Crosslight debt advice and support, Social Prescribers, NHS Psychological Wellbeing Practitioners and other service providers who are able to provide support and signpost to services.

Each week the service user can select 10 items from the groceries section which include items such as cereal, rice, pasta, milk, and fresh produce; and 5 Items from the household and toiletries section that include things such as deodorant, shampoo/conditioner, laundry detergent, cleaning products, and nappies.

They pay £5 and we subsidise the actual cost of each shop. We also sponsor some residents who are at crisis point financially either one offs, short term and long term offering them a shop at no cost to them.

Without donations our pantry would be unable to operate as the cost of replenishing the shelves would be too substantial for us. With the rising cost of living crisis, we are needed here more than ever.

In the past 3 years we have served over 400 households primarily in or around the Ivybridge Estate. The need for our services is rapidly growing, and we need more and more donations to keep the pantry open.

These households find themselves short on those everyday essentials such as toilet paper, hygiene products, washing detergent, sugar and milk. Our Community Pantry supplements these essentials and alleviates the financial cost of a weekly shop, and it is for those types of items that sponsors could help.

Often a person who is at crisis point will be burdened by a host of issues within their lives and financial constraint usually contributes to their difficult situation.  Sponsor a person who is at crisis point and in need of financial assistance to help feed their family.  We sponsor individuals who are carefully assessed, and support them either as a one off, short or long term by providing them with a free weekly shop.

We can only afford to open our pantry to our community once a week with donations and grants.  We currently do not have any grants in place so are relying totally on donations. Perhaps you would like to contribute to the weekly cost to running the pantry, the average cost to our charity for running a weekly pantry is £225.

Our Sponsor a Shelf scheme for individuals and organisations can help fund some of the items we provide the service users with. As part of this programme, businesses, individuals and organisations are asked to commit to sponsoring a shelf at the Pantry for a particular item. For example, if you sponsor our body wash for 1 month this would alleviate a cost of £50 for our charity to be able to provide this service to more people in need.

Sponsors can commit to 1 month, 3 months, 6 months and so forth. Every shelf sponsored is shared on our social media and website pages and your company will be tagged in all posts as partners, and your company logo will be placed next to the sponsored shelf in our pantry for the duration of your sponsorship so our users can recognise who our sponsors are.

ESOL attendances since January 2023
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The primary focus of these sessions is to teach English to Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL). We provide an informal environment for participants to improve their spoken and written English.

Tuesday’s class is a culturally sensitive informal space for women only where they can meet, socialise and learn English. Due to high demand and its popularity in approach, we now have an additional class for mixed gender groups that run on Monday mornings. 

Participants gain interpersonal skills and become valuable members of their community, engaging in activities outside of this session not only in the centre but across the borough.

For example, this group have worked with Kew Gardens and produced a piece of social art as part of Kew’s annual Community Week activities which will remain in the archives at Kew indefinitely.

Other activities they have participated in include:

IvybridgeLink Charity identified a need for ESOL classes to be delivered in such a way and they currently cover the costs to run these.

Sponsorship means we can continue providing these classes beyond 2025 and we can develop more regular workshops that can be incorporated into teaching English in creative and practical ways.

You can sponsor a one-off class, a class for 1 month, 3 months or 6 months and average cost of these classes is £125 each but we are happy to accept a contribution to this cost.