HOPE worldwide UK

General information

HOPE worldwide UK has a dual mission:

1. To relieve poverty in the UK and overseas
2. To mobilise volunteers in pursuit of this

We aim to achieve these objectives by developing innovative programmes that can involve volunteers to deliver high quality solutions to poverty.

Our main work in the UK helps homeless people and recovering addicts. Volunteers are involved in most aspects of service delivery and work together with our expert staff. We also mobilise volunteers to work within their local communities supporting local needs.

The Two Step programme works with single homeless people who are the lowest priority for Local Authority help. We deal with 1,500 referrals a year and provide assistance to 1,000 of these. Assistance includes providing advice, signposting, helping with paperwork, providing emergency accommodation in with Stopover volunteer hosts, and finding long term accommodation in the private rented sector (PRS).

In the last three years we have housed an average of 330 people a year in long term accommodation.

Once housed, the service users are offered a trained volunteer mentor in our Moving On scheme. This has been MBF (Mentoring and Befriending Foundation) approved. These mentors make a big difference - providing support accessing training and employment.

The ODAAT programme (One Day At A Time) helps substance misusers to live in abstinent recovery. It has a capacity of 13 spaces in the recovery houses and provides a combination of therapies over six months. These include one-on-one and group counselling, anger management, sport, peer support, life skills training and a gradual process of preparation for settled independent living.

At the end of the six months, service users can take advantage of 12 weeks of aftercare and can then access our work training programme that can lead to NVQs in Health and Social Care at level 2 or 3.

When leaving the six month residential programme, residents also have the option to enter our third stage supported houses, which currently have a capacity of 13 beds as well.

Volunteering is at the heart of all of this work, whether as Stopover supported lodging hosts, street outreach, volunteer mentors, trainee counsellors or floating supports, or as office volunteers. In addition, many volunteers take part in fundraising events and on 4th June, volunteers took part in community initiatives at over 20 sites across the UK as part of National Volunteer Week - helping in hospitals, care homes, parks and others.

In addition, HOPE worldwide UK supports the work of overseas organisations, mostly HOPE worldwide affiliates, to relieve poverty in India, Zambia, Bangladesh, Cambodia, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Europe.