Source City Angels is a project that supports people who are out and about in Chichester city centre on Friday nights. The project’s volunteers offer a calm voice, a listening ear and a hot drink to anyone in need. In just over a year the City Angels project has already had a massive impact. Their work has contributed to a 56% reduction in violent crime on a Friday night. City Angels use Lamplight to capture information about the people they support. By combining their own data with official crime statistics the City Angels have been able to successfully demonstrate their impact and secure more funding in order to expand their service to cover Saturday nights. The City Angels project was launched in January 2012, with two part-time support staff, 50 volunteers, a little drinks van called Charlie Alpha and lots of support from the police, pubs and district council.
Every Friday night volunteers capture on paper forms key pieces of information about the people they support. After the evening’s shift the information gets entered into Lamplight. City Angels’ have been able to use their data on Lamplight to show that:
As City Angels have been able to evidence what work they’ve done and the impact it has had on the city’s crime statistics they have successfully secured funding to expand their service to cover Saturday nights. The data here seems really convincing: it’s been a great natural experiment because it started small. Without the funding to run both nights, there’s been the ‘control group’ of Saturday nights with no angels, and they’ve seen the impact of the project both compared to the previous year and compared to a Saturday night during the same period. It also highlights for us the great strengths of the voluntary sector: this is a relatively cheap project, and it’s really simple: a cup of tea and a bunch of calm, friendly (and courageous) people in the right places at the right times. City Angels is supported by Chichester District Council, Sussex Police and Chichester Safety Partnership. Comments are closed.
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ROC Angels - an initiative of ROC (Redeeming Our Communities)
Charity - 1139817 / Registered Company - 7327258 Postal Address: ROC Angels, c/o The King's Centre, Park Rd, Halifax, HX1 2TS E-Mail: paul@rocangels.org (founder / CEO) / Phone: 07725501465 |