Making the 360-degree Charity: Transforming Sutton Night
Watch Charity Services
What is this Knowledge Exchange project about?
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This project aims to catalyse the long-term growth of Sutton Night Watch Homeless and propose a model for its transformation into a ‘360-degree charity’. In doing so, it is envisioned that this will make the charity more robust to crises and business interruption and develop its reputation for holistic services for the homeless, transient, and vulnerable. This project will also support the charity’s overarching mission by showcasing a resilient approach to social justice and welfare contingencies.
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The plan for a 360-degree charity, given the small enterprise size of Sutton Night Watch, will be based on a ‘hub-and-spoke’ organisational model. In this case, Sutton Night Watch will represent the hub, and its various partners and downstream support services for its homeless clientele will represent the spokes. The idea is that the charity is already recognised as a central point from which recovery from homelessness can begin, and it can use this enterprise to become a consolidated hub for getting people to the right lodging, health, and financial services.
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Currently, the business model involves providing references, tools, and access points for the homeless to engage in their own research and plans. The proposed model sees the charity’s new activities as including triage, advice, and active engagement with downstream care services to better guide and encourage the homeless with their options for recovery, while at the same time allowing for their freedom of choice.
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Roehampton brings the benefits of an interdisciplinary team who are invested in promoting the core values of the university - community, engagement, and partnership. The reliance on the academic expertise is two-fold. Firstly, the directive for business growth must be reframed to focus on cost management rather than funding. Secondly, it is necessary to understand the full sector context to unify the ideas for growth into an action plan.
Award
Winning
Sutton Night Watch Homeless Charity:
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The longstanding Directors of Sutton Night Watch have built the organisations from the ground up over the last 5 years and have a visceral connection with the needs of their homeless and vulnerable clientele. They have also endured the transition through Covid-19 to create a resilient business model and they have first-hand understanding of the strengths and gaps in the services
they can currently offer.
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Project Presentation Knowledge Exchange & Social Justice:
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This talk was given at the the School of Education, Centre for Learning, Teaching and Human Development on 24 November 2021, at the University of Roehampton.
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Cross-Disciplinary Collaboration (School of Education and Business & Law School)
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Dr Ellis Osabutey has expertise in human resource capabilities, talent development at the executive levels, and strategic management with respect to finance and technology. He will be using this to understand the systems, operations, and risks relevant to Sutton Night Watch, such that they can be enveloped in a Theory of Change for the new business model.
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RSU's Growhampton & Sutton Night Watch - 'The Garden of Hope'
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The project also includes facilitating a project between the RSU's ‘Growhampton’ sustainable initiative with University of Roehampton student volunteers and Sutton Night Watch Homeless Charity volunteers. The Growhampton student volunteers are going to assist with designing and setting up a herb-garden and green space at Sutton Night Watch Homeless Charity headquarters.
In November 2021 Sutton Night Watch Homeless Charity, Chief Executive Director, Mr Andy Fulker visited and toured Growhampton's facilites and lunched at The Hive Campus Cafe with student volunteers and Growhampton Coordinator Mr Ollie Cem Ayyildiz (images below).
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The spaces to transform at Sutton Night Watch Homeless Charity include a backyard area with wall-space for vertical planting and discussions are underway about the types of gardening options available for a micro-green kitchen garden and the potential to grow low maintenance crops like potato and garlic. Below are images of the space to transform at Sutton Night Watch Charity Headquarters:
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Growhampton Volunteers at Sutton Night Watch:
On March 18th our Roehampton university students, who volunteer through our student-led initiative Growhampton spent the day at Sutton Night Watch to set up their Garden of Hope. Students were most delighted to learn more about the work done with staff at Sutton and to engage with homeless clients. Students were able to set up herbs and root crops which could be harvested for hot lunches served daily at Sutton's Centre. Below are some photos from a very productive collaboration.
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Knowledge Exchange Partnership:
We would like to thank the following university volunteers: Ms Aaliyah Hassan, Ms Nehal Koradia, Ms Carolina Cutrona, Ms Aisha and Mr Ollie Cem Ayyildiz.
If you would like to donate to Sutton Night Watch, or for more information on this project please contact the Principal Investigator, Dr Melissa Jogie, for more information.
PROJECT WINS: OUTSTANDING COLLABORATION IN COMMUNITY INNOVATION (2022)
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The BIG South London Business Innovation Growth Summit Awards recognised the extraordinary vision and ambition of BIG-supported South London entrepreneurs and businesses who are impacting and inspiring the community to push forward and innovate. Cllr Andreas Kirsch, Leader at Kingston Council and Cllr Gareth Roberts, Leader at Richmond, presented the awards in five categories, of which this project was awarded 'Outstanding Collaboration in Community Innovation'.
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Winners from left: Kingston University, St Mary's University, St George University of London, University of Roehampton (Dr Melissa Jogie), Merton Chamber of Commerce, London South Bank University.
The partnership between Roehampton University and Sutton Night Watch continues to flourish, as we have built on the findings of this BIG Voucher project to move into two more rounds of successful funding. In 2023, Dr Jogie received a British Academy Innovation Fellowship (£70K) and a second successful BIG Voucher funding (£5K) for a collaborative project focusing on homeless women who are at significantly higher risk of experiencing random acts of violence.
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The next steps for working with Sutton Night Watch include expanding their capabilities to attend to their homeless clientele more effectively with the integration of technology and using research informed evidence to help curate business objectives that are situated within local community partnerships and services.
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Read more about our next steps here.
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If you are interested in becoming more involved with either this project or the work that is done by Sutton Night Watch, please contact us.