Everyday Champions Centre - Charities report - 18.1

The charity has carried out a wide range of activities during 2017-18.

Advancement of the Christian Faith

The provision of:

- Christian church services every Sunday in all locations.

- Champion Kids activities which run every Sunday for 3-11 year olds in all locations.

- "Connect groups" which meet in the homes of church members during the week in Newark, Wellingborough,

London, and began in Swansea in September 2015.

- Amplified youth groups, which run weekly in term times in Newark and Wellingborough and fortnightly in Swansea.

- Courses teaching about the Christian faith and applying its principles in everyday life in Newark, Wellingborough and

London.

Relief of sickness and financial hardship

Involvement in:

- The Impact project, a joint police and churches together venture which provides advice and practical support (e.g.

hot food and pantry supplies) primarily to people affected by substance misuse.

- New Life Children's Centres, a UK charity we partner with that works in the Gambia to provide primary and secondary

education through sponsorship.

- Teen Challenge, a charity we partner with to offer advice and practical help to people with drug and alcohol addictions.

- The work of MIY (More In You), a UK charity which comes under the umbrella of Everyday Champions. Many

projects have been run which serve the community. For example- visiting care homes, assisting local charities in their

work, giveaways, responding to local needs, litter picking, family fun days.

- Compassion UK. A global charity committed to bringing relief of poverty in communities in Jesus name. People in the

church are encouraged to sponsor children direct and we provide compassion a platform to continue to develop

sponsorship opportunities as well as a financial gift from our annual offering.

Advancement of Education

The provision of:

- "Little Champs" Pre-School and Day Nursery, which operates in Wellingborough, providing care and education for

children aged up to 8 years old.

- Employment opportunities, including short-term work experience and apprenticeship opportunities.

- Volunteering opportunities where volunteers can gain skills and experience. Every year we provide opportunities for

children in secondary education who are looking for work experience to access our charitable activity and social

enterprises to develop key skills.

- Impact coaching. Creating an opportunity for adults and young people to self-evaluate unique gifts, talents and

experiences that could result in a career change or identifying paths for development.

Summary of the main activities undertaken for the public benefit.

During the period 2017-2018 the following activities and events have been organised:-

1. Church activities

Everyday Champions encompasses four locations.

We seek to offer anyone who lives within travelling distance of our church communities an opportunity to be part of a

welcoming and vibrant church community. We aim to provide activities that every age group can benefit from, where

they can access friendship, an opportunity to understand the Christian faith, to access pastoral care, and practical help

and support. We aim to ensure that all our members are a contributing part of accomplishing our vision, and we invest in

training and equip them to love and serve our communities. We champion new initiatives and projects that further our

vision, which is to connect people to God, community and purpose.

We also offer access to our church teaching via recordings uploaded to youtube, and from January 2018 we have sent

out numerous bite size teaching videos via email to every subscriber and shared them on our social media platforms. We

have had reports from many people who are not physically attending our church that these have been a great source of

encouragement and motivation. Some of those who have reflected this back to us do not profess to be Christians. We

value contributing to the lives of people who have a faith or none and is in alignment with our desire as a church and

organisation to be inclusive.

Sunday gatherings

As we are only in the fourth year of working across four locations, we have continued to work hard to ensure all

Everyday Champions

Church activities are consistent in cultural values, standard of excellence, and common systems. Using central resource

in producing church programme and resources is allowing us to work effectively.

Average combined Sunday attendance is now 420. This breaks down to average attendance in each of the locations as

follows:

Newark- 115

Wellingborough- 270

London- 20

Swansea-15

A crèche facility is available in all four locations during the main church services for families with 0-3 year olds.

Champion Kids runs weekly in all locations, providing children aged 3-11 years old with fun activities and Christian

teaching. It has an average attendance of 30 in Newark and 60 in Wellingborough and 3 in London and 8 in Swansea.

We have worked hard to ensure all Everyday Champions Church kids activities are consistent in cultural values,

standard of excellence, and common systems. Using central resource in producing a teaching programme and resources

is allowing us to work effectively. Over the last year we have invested in and developed our use of media to improve our

provision, in using screens, video teaching, and music. Champions kids has developed its own strong brand and have

developed bags and badges that help reinforce positive identity messages. We have also worked hard at putting tools in

the hands of parents to help facilitate conversations at home along the theme of the curriculum. One development has

been the use of video's on YouTube to deliver this. We have a standardised provision across all locations, and raised

standards over all locations.

Church community

Connect Groups for both adults, and 11-18 year olds(Amplified connect) are run fortnightly, and are an important part of

how the Everyday Champions Church community is built. Here people can connect with each other as community whilst

encouraging and supporting each other. Video content plays a big part in facilitating these groups and allows us to keep

a consistent message throughout our four locations. Average attendance of connect groups is as follows:

Newark- 100

Wellingborough- 150

London- 20

Swansea- 19

Training

Periodically we have held team days gathering all sites, to communicate vision, information, and build relationships that

span over distance. On average 65-70 people have attended many of which have travelled to attend each event. This has

helped to raise standards and standardise.

We have started a leadership coaching environment called Impact, which runs fortnightly in all locations. This is to

allow every person to develop in leadership skills whatever their area.  This has been very successful, and has drawn in

many who were not able to attend connect groups. Everyday Champions is committed to developing a coaching culture

and 'impact nights' have played a key part in bringing that to fruition.

2. Community work

IM-PACT Project

6 volunteers from EC help each week on average. Two committee members are from EC, Ken Morgan and Margaret

Staples. There were 22 mentors/volunteers during this period. Average attendance of clients is 15-20.

Hot meals are provided at the weekly Drop-in sessions. Showers are available. Emergency food parcels, clothes, shoes,

blankets, sleeping bags, tents and toiletries are provided.

The volunteers offer befriending, practical advice and sign-post to other agencies.

They accompany clients to the Job Centre, Housing department, CAB, Food Bank, Debt agencies, doctors, CRI, hospital

appointments, probation, court, rehabilitation centres and other places as needed.

Some volunteers meet regularly for coffee with clients and some help practically at church, with supervision.

The library is a good venue to meet those who prefer a one to one session, rather than a group encounter.

Families and schools

We are committed to supporting schools and families in our local community. Two of our members are now school

chaplains and one member is a school governor.

We have run family events in all locations, and continue to run weekly Mini Champs parent and toddler sessions in

Wellingborough. Building relationships with regular attenders has allowed volunteers to get involved with families to

provide advice, support and signpost to services needed.

We continue to run Little Champs Preschool and Day Nursery, which is a trading subsidiary of the charity

Wellingborough which offers affordable childcare for 2-8 year olds.

Occupancy reached 98% during the year.

The staff team has grown, all full time staff are qualified to Level 3, and Managers are Early Years Professionals. Two

staff members are doing a degree in childhood studies. Two apprentices are placed at the nursery. The deputy manager

has been trained in finance and is now responsible for part of the book keeping, this has improved financial awareness

and effective decision making at the nursery.

The Nursery finances are still managed daily in order to keep them up to date, and debt management is dealt with at a

weekly meeting between the finance officer and the nursery manager. Debt has been extremely low throughout the year.

An end of month management report provides information on profit and loss, and other key performance indicators.

The rapport between staff and parents continues to be excellent.

Policies and procedures continue to be updated regularly and training is ongoing. All staff are regularly kept up to date

with training, and staff induction has been brought to a very good standard.

The Nursery was inspected by Ofsted in December 2017 and achieved a 'Good' outcome and an excellent report

identifying many positive aspects of the Nursery provision.

The leader of our Newark community has been working with Magnus school, Newark, Nottinghamshire, to do two

weeks of assemblies this year. as well as being part of a mentoring programme they have started up. We are also in the

process of starting a lunch time club that will focus on identity statements

Community Projects - Outworked through our sister charity i61 Project (renamed MIY (more in You) inc)

The aim of i61 is to serve our local community practically.

Whilst we have a number of our own initiatives under i61, the goal is to partner with other local groups and charitable

organisations in order to provide volunteers, practical support and resource.

We have concentrated on a project based approach, providing volunteers, resource, admin support, by putting on Family

fun events, and giving gifts to those living in deprived areas within the community at Easter and Christmas.

Community events have now been extended to Swansea in South Wales. As has already been mentioned we have started

Coffee Hut in Greenwich which has opened up conversation within the community about how we can better support

local needs. It has brought members of a diverse community together in London. We have been able to respond to crisis

such as urgent food bank donations and are in the process of partnering with local organisations working with the

homeless and asylum seekers.

EC continues to support NLCC, volunteers continue to support a local Charity Shop in Newark town centre which has

been very successful, and is funding a third building project at one of the schools sites.

Regular trips to the Gambia are run which take up to 30 people from the UK and give them opportunity to volunteer for

a week at NLCC, but also to catch the vision of NLCC. Many different people with skills and experience have helped

NLCC in its work, for example, medical professionals, managers and people with experience in admin and finance,

teachers and childrens workers. This has resulted in more people in the UK recruiting sponsors, and more people

sponsoring a child £15.00 a month or a teacher £25.00 per month.

3. Business and social enterprise

The Newark Business Club continue to use the Newark building as their meeting place, which allows us to meet and

serve over 200 business owners in the Newark area once a month. We offer the venue free of charge, as part of Everyday

Champion's commitment to invest in the business community.

We wholly own Café Connect of Newark, a Starbucks franchise, which serves our community and particularly our local

business community. It has become a hub for the local community, providing local businesses with a venue for meetings

and informal supervisions, as well as allowing people to link into charity events and initiatives we run. All profit goes to

furthering the objectives of Everyday Champions. We have been able to connect people through the café to help and

support they have needed, and have been able to help people return to work, and to gain skills.

Café Connect has continued to hold its 5 star rating from environmental health.

The café has successfully served all conferences and events, including multiple events running simultaneously as well as

individual events of 400 people.

The café again participated in MacMillan's Biggest Coffee Morning raising funds for the Macmillan charity. Café

Connect is a great resource for counselling and meetings for people in the third sector. We are keen for this to develop

and in the next year plan to invest significantly in the link between the café and signposting the community to relevant

services, as well as extending the café provision to our other locations.

We wholly own Everyday Champions Conferences. The conference centre, is operated within a wholly owned trading

subsidiary, Everyday Champions (Conference) Limited.

The conference business has continued to serve existing customers and new customers which include businesses, local

government, education and the third sector.

This business provides a quality value for money service, where we have been able to serve our customers well and at

the same time to invest in our community. We have been privileged to host local schools, both for education board

appeals, to teacher training, to school performances. We have been able to help local charities, health provisions, and

social projects facilitate their projects. All profits go to furthering the objectives of Everyday Champions.

3. Everyday Champions Operations

Management

In the previous financial year we moved our head office to Greenwich, which has this year become an effective base for

the organisation to grow.

We continue to employ a company providing business service support, with expertise in employment law and health and

safety. This maintains standards and consistency, and provides a resource for all managers to access master documents,

up to date policies and procedures, and guidance documents.

We outsourced our book keeping, payroll, and financial reporting. We believe this will improve our current competency,

our quarterly reporting, and our future strategy.

We recruited a person who manages and develops our influence in the areas of social media and the internet, which has

helped us to further all of our objectives. They are also responsible for design and marketing.

Safeguarding

All new volunteers have had DBS checks where relevant, all existing volunteers have current DBS checks where

relevant. All recruiters we purchased online safeguarding training for all relevant staff and volunteers

We have successfully addressed several serious safeguarding concerns.

We still employ CCPAS as our advisory service in the area of safeguarding.

Training and volunteering opportunities

We continue to have people regularly volunteering in the running of the Centres in necessary roles, i.e., conference

support, café staff, admin support. We continue to provide supervision, personal coaching, training, to enable them to

volunteer and to develop in their skills and experience.

We again have several apprentices in Little Champs Nursery, and have transitioned our previous apprentices into full

time employee roles at the nursery.

We have accommodated people of all ages completing work experience in a variety of areas within the organisation.

Volunteer workers.

This year the Greenwich community and head office have benefited from two volunteer workers. We have been able to

provide training and opportunities for these volunteer workers to gain skills and experience, we have provided

accommodation and 'travel to work' expenses as part of the agreement, and in return we have benefited from the time,

efforts, input and previous experience that the volunteer workers have invested over the past year. We have seen

significant development in the areas they have focused on.