We applied to the Innovation Fund in the hopes of launching an ‘Activity Food and Fun’ club looking at wellness and healthy eating within the community of Chalvey. We intend to start with children and families initially and then open up to the wider community. This will be a partnership project, led by Chalvey Community Partnership with support from Slough Borough Council, Chalvey Can and Breaking Boundaries.

Through this club we will aim to improve community cohesion, alongside the physical and mental wellbeing of the Chalvey community. Our partners, Chalvey Can and Breaking Boundaries will deliver a session of physical activity for the whole family and Chalvey Community Partnership will lead the families for dinner club, cooking healthy and nutritious food together before eating together as a group. Alongside this we will look to work with local food businesses to get involved in the project, either as sponsors, guest chefs or to help with promotion.

This will be the first project of its kind in Chalvey and we hope to use this funding as an opportunity to pilot this project, enabling us to apply for further funding and to develop this idea as we learn more through this process. As the project grows we will open up the club to the whole population of Chalvey rather than exclusively to families.

Chalvey Community Partnership (CCP) is a constituted community group, made up of volunteer members of the Chalvey community who are driving the Strong, Healthy and Attractive Chalvey plan.

We are recognise that Chalvey is the most ethnically diverse ward in Slough and scores the lowest for community cohesion on the Slough Borough Councils ward rankings. 52% of Chalvey residents felt there was a very or fairly big, problem with people not treating each other with respect and consideration (Place Survey 2018) and more recently 37% said they did not feel like they belonged to the Chalvey neighbourhood (Stronger Neighbourhoods Survey 2019). Some of these survey respondents gave ‘lack of community cohesion’ and ‘no sense of community’ as reasons for this. Chalvey is also the second most deprived ward across Slough and across the Frimley area, with 20.9% of its children at risk of living in poverty. 14.9% of Chalvey children are eligible and claiming free school meals compared to 11.7% across Slough, emphasising the food poverty of Chalvey families.

In order to drive the plan, CCP work in partnership with Slough Borough Council, Thames Valley Police, NHS Frimley CCG and other relevant organisations, focusing on key issues including health and wellbeing, housing and regeneration, community safety, community cohesion, environment, businesses, skills and jobs.