A community group which transformed a town's old Victorian cottage hospital into affordable homes and a community hub has been honoured with a national award.
SouthGen, which owns and operates Southwold's Old Hospital Hub, has won the Plunkett Foundation's annual Rural Vision Volunteering Award.
The Plunkett Foundation commended SouthGen's approach to volunteering, highlighting its diverse range of opportunities and how it utilised volunteers' skillsets.
It said: "SouthGen demonstrated that, in addition to benefitting the community, their volunteers found fulfilment in their roles and experienced improved mental health and well-being."
Functioning as a charity and a community business, SouthGen evolved out of a successful grassroots campaign initiated in 2015 after the NHS decided to close Southwold Hospital.
The campaign, spearheaded by SouthGen's Chair, Jessica Jeans, proved instrumental in saving the hospital.
She said: "The loss of the hospital threatened Southwold, which has the highest number of second homes in the country.
"We knew something had to be done, and despite the difficulties, it was achievable with collective effort and sound advice.
"The Plunkett Foundation played a pivotal role by offering support at our very first community meeting."
After the NHS sold the pld hospital to a partnership comprising SouthGen and Hastoe Housing Association, £1.3 million was raised - including half a million through a community share offer.
It led to SouthGen successfully redeveloping a third of the site into a vibrant community hub as Hastoe funded the cost of the land and redeveloped the rest as affordable housing.
The regenerated Old Hospital, unveiled in June 2022, now houses two community businesses owned by SouthGen—The Old Hospital Nursery and The Canteen café—alongside Southwold Library and the Geography Fieldwork Academy, catering to A-level students nationwide.
Additionally, nine families now live in the affordable housing units.
Volunteering opportunities
The activities of SouthGen’s roster of 114 volunteers cover a wide spectrum—from educating children in cooking and gardening to delivering a monthly Sunday Community Lunch, supporting families of children with special educational needs, landscaping and maintaining the Old Hospital gardens, to offering specialised professional advice to the all-volunteer Management Committee.
Besides volunteering opportunities, the Old Hospital Hub has generated 14 new full-time equivalent jobs, including the role of Community and Business Coordinator - funded by a Reaching Communities (National Lottery) grant - which provided £250,000 in revenue support for the first two-and-a-half years of the Old Hospital’s start-up trading and community activities.
Sydney Barbrook, who fills this role and hails from Reydon, was credited by SouthGen Chair, Jessica Jeans, for this prestigious award - emphasising his role in recruiting and organising volunteers.
She said: "One of SouthGen’s goals was to create job opportunities that would keep young people in our area by creating meaningful new work; this way we can foster a new generation passionate about assisting others.
"The Reaching Communities grant, along with the goodwill and support of East Suffolk Council, has been critical to achieving this objective."
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