Dursley-based social enterprise, World Jungle, was delighted this week to win the ‘Contribution to the Community’ Award at this year’s Stroud Life Business Awards – for the second time!
Founders of the company, Jane Manning and Ben Ward, accepted the award on the evening at an event attended by a diverse range of businesses from across the Five Valleys and Severn Vale.
The award recognised the significant role World Jungle had made supporting the community in the Cam and Dursley area. This was in terms of working with a whole cross-section of local people including young and old, vulnerable and isolated, special needs and young families. In addition, World Jungle has undertaken environmental projects, helped to improve local facilities and supported other community organisations in the area to achieve their goals. Ben Ward said:
“We have estimated that over 10,000 people have benefited from our activities over the last year leading to a significant contribution to the overall wellbeing of our community. We were absolutely delighted to have our achievements recognised and would like to take this opportunity to thank all our funders who have enabled us to carry out some key projects this year, together with our team of staff and volunteers who help make everything happen.”
Over the past year World Jungle has run free community fundays and holiday activity programmes, projects to support Young Carers, health and fitness classes for all ages and abilities, environmental activities to encourage people to reconnect with their local environment, and established a community café for isolated older residents in Cam Woodfields.
In addition, they have provided support for a number of other local community groups including helping Breakheart Community Project raise £37,000 in funding for the development of new facilities. Revitalising the Chantry Centre in Dursley has also been key to their activities over the past twelve months, which has seen World Jungle establish an office in the centre, run numerous events and help develop funding strategies to improve facilities. Ben Ward continues:
“We are very proud of our achievements in what has been a difficult year for the Voluntary and Community Sector generally and we hope to build on this for 2014/15.”
World Jungle 