North West charity Torus Foundation is launching a new collaboration project designed to empower people to become ‘agents of change’ within their communities – and to tackle local health concerns from the ground up.

Aiming to engage 5,000 people in Liverpool, St Helens and Warrington, the Healthy Neighbours Project is all about establishing a network of community champions and volunteers to make a real difference to lives and life chances.

Torus Foundation has commissioned a spectrum of local partners including First Person Project CIC, Friends of St Elphin’s Park, Longford Neighbourhood Service Centre (known locally as The Roy Humphreys Centre and City Healthcare Partnership’s St Helens Wellbeing to carry out research and help identify the key health concerns for communities, now and in the year ahead.

The project will focus on seven localities, where a Volunteer Co-ordinator in each area is on the look-out for volunteers who live and breathe their environment. These community members will know what challenges need to be addressed and how best to address them. They are engaged with their neighbourhood, hear the unsaid and can really influence change.

Volunteers will take part in activities to engage local communities, with the aim of improving health and wellbeing against an agreed set of health indicators, which could include food poverty, loneliness, obesity, physical inactivity and mental health.

As the charitable arm of growth and regeneration group Torus, the Foundation is committed to collaborating with key partners and neighbourhoods to grow stronger communities.

In addition to a health and wellbeing focus, the Foundation’s varied programme of support covers a spectrum of initiatives that also enhance opportunities for employment and skills, financial and digital inclusion and youth services.

Helen Cibinda Ntale, Head of Health and Wellbeing, Torus Foundation,

“We’re excited to see how the organisations signed up are going to help us seek solutions to the challenges those living across our neighbourhoods are facing.

“For the Healthy Neighbours Project to be a success, it will rely on the people living among the neighbourhoods who are keen to support the challenge to tackle social issues, becoming agents for social change within their own community.”