The Big Lottery Fund awarded wellbeing programme aims to improve the general health and lifestyle of all Londoners. By using innovative ways of engaging families and individuals with unhealthy lifestyles Activate London’s partners hope to encourage disengaged members of the community to change their unhealthy habits through community-based social activities.
Led by Peabody Trust, the programme launch will feature an exciting array of wellbeing events to be held in all four corners of the capital over the next week (see programme for further details).
Peabody Trust Chief Executive Steve Howlett said: "This programme means that over 40,000 people living in the capital’s most deprived communities will have access to a whole range of enjoyable and educational projects that promote physical exercise, mental health and healthy eating.
"By encouraging social housing residents to adopt healthier diets and lifestyles, I believe we can create a more socially inclusive and sustainable London."
More than 84 individual projects will be rolled out from 300 local hubs, in 33 London Boroughs over the next four years, as part of Activate London.
The programme includes gardening clubs, youth cooking activities, social outings for people over 50 years old and more. Peabody Trust helps form and support groups of social housing residents and enables them to devise and deliver their own projects.
Interested Londoners can call 0800 587 8215 for more information or to reserve a place at any of the Peabody Trust-led, Activate London events.
Activate London is funded by the Big Lottery Fund. The project is led by Peabody Trust and delivered in partnership with Broomleigh Housing, CBHA, Circle Anglia, Family Mosaic, Metropolitan Housing and Southern Housing.
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For more information please contact Peabody Trust’s Media Relations Officer, Yasmin Noone, on (020) 7021 4210 or via email.
Full details of the work of the Big Lottery Fund, its programmes and awards are available on the website: www.biglotteryfund.org.uk
Notes to editor:
• Peabody Trust is one of London's largest and oldest housing associations, as well as being a charity and community regeneration agency. Founded by George Peabody, an American philanthropist, in 1862, the Peabody Trust Group now owns or manages 20,000 properties across 27 London boroughs, housing nearly 50,000 people.
• The £165 million Activate London well-being programme provides funding to support the development of healthier lifestyles and to improve well-being. The programme will focus on three strands: mental health – to help people and communities to improve mental well-being; physical activity – to help people to become more physically active in their daily lives and in their communities; and healthy eating - for children, parents and the wider community to eat more healthily. To deliver this programme, the Big Lottery Fund has appointed a number of organisations that will each deliver a portfolio of projects in England.
• The Big Lottery Fund rolls out close to £2 million in Lottery good cause money every 24 hours which together with other Lottery distributors means that across the UK most people are within a few miles of a Lottery-funded project.
• The Big Lottery Fund, the largest of the National Lottery good cause distributors, has been rolling out grants to health, education, environment and charitable causes across the UK since its inception in June 2004.
• Since the National Lottery began in 1994, 28p from every pound spent by the public has gone to Good Causes. As a result, over £20 billion has now been raised and more than 280,000 grants given out across the arts, sport, heritage, charities, health, education and the environment.
