My name is Donna Douglas and I have been a part of the Experts by Experience group for just over a year now. I am the Chairperson for the Experts group and facilitator for the Freedom programme, and I have just completed perpetrator’s training around domestic violence.
As a group we have a Community Lunch on a Friday afternoon for people to come along and talk to like-minded individuals about some of the issues they face; we give our experiences on how we have dealt with any such problems.
With the onset of winter, we had the idea of starting a Dinner Club to run as well as our regular lunch club, for those that are in need of a hot meal and somewhere safe to sit for a couple of hours.
As a result of this we have recently started a weekly Dinner Club session at Basis on Gateshead High Street, the centre linked to Oasis Aquila Housing which is one of the Core Partners in the Fulfilling Lives programme.
The Dinner Club runs from 5-7pm every Wednesday. It is aimed at people suffering homelessness, social isolation or facing hardship of any kind, and people in recovery who just want to help those in the position that they may have been in themselves historically.
The people who attend are provided with free freshly cooked food as well as tea and coffee.
The Experts group contacted Basis as they agreed that it was the best place for people to be safe on a night time in the Gateshead area. Those who attend the dinner club are provided a place of safety to get the help they need and are offered signposting to other organisations who may be able to help them with any issues that they are going through at the time.
Our Dinner Club also gives people new to the Experts group the opportunity to do some voluntary work which can help them build their confidence and also help in building up their CVs.
As well as providing a warm meal and peer support, we put on activities for those that attend the Dinner Club, including bingo and quizzes, as well as inviting people along from other recovery programmes to share their stories of recovery and help inspire others who are looking to get in to recovery from whatever they suffer from.
We want to thank Basis and Oasis Aquila for giving us this chance. The feedback from the first couple of sessions we have held have all been positive.
We hope that this Dinner Club will be a social event that our Service Navigators can use in the future to signpost their clients who live in the area so we can carry a message of hope and recovery through lived experience to these people.
For more information on the Dinner Club, contact Donna on EBEChair@fulfillinglives-ng.org.uk
