Maindee unlimited is steered by Volunteers from the local area. These trustees are unpaid local people that help steer the organisation in the right direction. Using their skills & networks to make sure the work carried out is effective.

Introducing our Trustees: Angela Lloyd

Maindee unlimited is steered by Volunteers from the local area. These trustees are unpaid local people that help steer the organisation in the right directions. They use their skills and networks to make sure the work carried out is effective and lasting.  This blog post is part of a series where we find out a little more about our Trustees. So next time you see them on the street you might be wanting to ask a question or just get some advice :)

Todays post is from Angela Lloyd. 

As a child I lived in Harrow road then later I moved to Rugby road. Im an only child of a relatively small family where my father worked on the railways as a goods guard, it was an important job and he loved his Job. I have so many fond memories of growing up in the area and I have fond memories of my father who also loved Maindee. I was a lucky one, my school wasn’t too far from my home so I use to go home for lunch so have been a Maindee all my life and is in the heart of what I do here today.

Before Maindee Unlimited formed I was and have been a lollypop lady for 22 years. I remember my friend Loyce Eads was the community development worker for Maindee a few years ago and she wanted to mobilise local residents to begin organising groups. She’s a motivated lady and good at getting people to try new things. In the first meeting she arranged many of us from the community to meet at the newly built university campus in Newport.  It was a great idea to have a look around a building that was at the forefront of some changes in the city.  It was there where I met like minded people and and began on a few actions. Maindee has always been a complex and changing place growing up, it has developed a lot and what we deem as Maindee today is alot different. I know divisions exist and change over time, I remember a time Corporation road was seen as a separate area, devoid of any connection to Maindee. Its changed much for the older members of this community, we try to encourage people to get together and share the good experiences as well as show support through the bad. That has been ongoing.

Since then I have been vice chair of the group called Maindee action group. Out meeting was held at St Mathews Church. We have run a food co op there every Wednesday morning and has been a great valuable project in Maindee. Fundraising however was and is always as an ongoing thing that requires your attention. Its just one of those tough realities all groups face when starting up and sustaining over years. But it gets easier over time and with good teams becomes achievable. The original aim was to develop a community centre for the area.

This lead to me being involved with Maindee Unlimited. 

The first meeting was where we tried to rally a few local people, activists and stake holders. All whom wanted to see Maindee become a vibrant place and strive to support families that chose to live here. Part of the reason to form Maindee Unlimited was to begin looking for funds to develop a community centre which was going to be based in St Matthews, church sadly those plans changed due to the realities of the architectural problems that existed there. The building was not in a good state at all. 

We didn’t give up, we heard the library was closing so many of us got together to stop it. This place has been very important to Maindee so the news mobilised a lot of us to get involved and active. This has lead us to develop the library space instead which has worked out for the best! My role as trustee here is to help envisage and action some of the basic duties of a charity such as signing important papers and reviewing work that has been carried out or planning new things. I have always liked the idea of people taking ownership of their community spaces. Being around like minded people helps this. Thats how I started working in my community. They help to motivate and encourage you to stand up and have a voice. Because I was from Maindee it was a natural process for me to stand up for other people and do whatever small things I could to make a little difference. Thats all we can do really.  

I always hope for the best in Maindee and one of the things I would like to see more of is the idea of a Market or local buying inititiatives… We need to see if this idea will work well and need to find people to get involved and support the idea and ultimately lead on it to develop into the future. Buying local has been an initiative we have run recently through the Maindee village partnership project. I hope to see more of the art activities for kids too as they bring lots of smiles and make the area more vibrant to live in.