Prince’s Trust revamp Kingfisher Community Allotments
By Mollie Johnstone
Bringing the community together. What does this mean to you? Personally, for me I think it’s a very important part of everyday life. As humans, we have to have a sense of connecting with others around us and working together as a team. So, this is why I decided to take part and volunteer as a Prince’s Trust student to help take part in the Kingfisher community allotment project. The Kingfisher Project provides many sources for the local community. It is a historical and educational resource for residents and schools as well as being used for public amenity and leisure. Over the past two weeks, the Prince’s Trust team Burton 381 and Trent and Dove have come together to revamp the Kingfisher Project. This has involved taking out old beds to replace with fresh wood and refilled with 10 tonne of soil, creating a disabled access bed with a new patio and concrete ramp, redesigning art boards and fence panels and general cleaning of the garden area. The art boards have been cleverly created to represent the local organisations that have taken part to complete the project. The allotment beds can now be used to create food for local food banks and charities, for example the YMCA. The disabled access bed now makes the allotments accessible to everybody in the community. The Prince’s Trust team, alongside Trent & Dove worked incredibly hard to complete three days work in the space of one, meaning that they were ahead of schedule, opening up more opportunities elsewhere on the project. Aaron Stringer, the community project leader from Trent & Dove has shown his gratitude towards the team,
“The students and our volunteers have done a truly fantastic job with so much enthusiastic energy it has been a real pleasure to be working with them to revamp the allotment project.”
For me, I believe that the project has changed the perception of young people. The Prince’s Trust team ages 16 to 25 have been able to come together with other volunteers from Trent & Dove to give back to the local community. I feel this has worked in their favour to change the views of younger people and cut through the stereotypes against today’s youth. The Kingfisher Project has won several awards including the Queens Award for Voluntary service. Chairman of the project, Mr Lemare also worked on the project and has shown his greatest appreciation towards the Prince’s Trust team and Trent & Dove for working alongside him and freshening up the Kingfisher Project. For Trent & Dove, the project itself reinforces their message of wanting to not only improve the local homes but improve the local community and transform neighbourhoods and lives. A huge thank you to Harlow’s Timber for providing the wood and paint, Burton skip hire for providing a skip and Home and Trade for providing the soil, sand and concrete.
For more photos, head over to the Trent & Dove Facebook page