Workbridge, proudly working with Vitiliglow™

“Those of you that follow me on Twitter and Facebook will remember seeing a recent post about Vitiliglow’s partners. I’m delighted to be working with the Workbridge team and so pleased that Operations Manager Nick Todd has agreed to tell you more about it in this latest blog post.
 
We’ve chosen today to post this blog because it is World Mental Health Day. Workbridge does fabulous work with lots of different people at all stages of recovery from mental illness so it’s important for me to support this work because many people with Vitiligo often suffer from self esteem issues which can lead on to anxiety and depression.
 
I hope you enjoy reading this blog post from Nick and as always, do let me know what you think.
 
Best wishes
Polly Gotschi
Founder of Vitiliglow™
 
We were really excited last month to meet with Polly to discuss us packaging Vitiliglow™ products, it’s a great task for the people we support to help with, but who are we, and who are we helping?
 
One question that we get asked all the time is “What is Workbridge?”
 
Well, where do I start?
Workbridge is charity with a difference – we were set up 30 years ago to provide vocational training and experience for people with a mental health need, learning disability or brain injury.  Workbridge, who merged with Northampton based St Andrew’s Healthcare back in 2009, offers opportunities for people to access a wide range of activities including woodwork, horticulture, catering, office skills, contracting packaging and ceramics. All of these activities are tailored towards people gaining real work skills.
 
Workbridge is lots of things to lots of people, and the areas our customers see only really scratch the surface of what we’re about and what we do.
 
For those of you local to Northampton, the chances are you will see what we provide at our main site (see our website for more details), but its how it’s produced that really makes it interesting. Our main aim is to help people gain vocational experience and every week we work with over 250 people to help them to learn new skills.
 
All of the people we support get involved in tasks that are centred on real work, producing items for our customers, or in this case packaging Vitiliglow™ products. Everyone attending Workbridge plays a part in looking after our customers, whether it’s serving a customer, or developing something new that we think will interest you.
 
We support people to move on from us as well, usually to either paid or voluntary employment elsewhere which is the ultimate goal for most people.
 
Our income goes towards subsidising the cost of running Workbridge, so next time you buy a Vitiliglow™ product, it’s not only a great, unique product, but it’s helped someone build their confidence, self-esteem, and work skills to bring them closer to employment.
 
So, how does the link with Vitiliglow™ benefit the people Workbridge supports?
 
When an order comes from Polly, we’ll use it as a chance for someone to develop their skills -  from printing the labels, collating the parcel contents, packaging the products, to sending them for quality checking, before passing them to the courier for delivery to you.
 
All the tasks are broken into manageable chunks so the whole team can play a part, with people focussing on their current strengths (and weaknesses) to build their confidence, self-esteem and give them a chance to work as part of a team.
 
I can’t sum it up any better than the people we support can, so I’ll leave you with this quote;
 
“Workbridge is a good place to work as you can learn all about different things in a real job”.
 
Nick Todd
Operations Manager
Workbridge
 

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