Chania

Tom's Trust has supported

Springfield Logo


Image courtesy of Springfield

Courtesy of Springfield


Springfield Community Flat is a small charity working on 4 sites in and around the Springfield Estate - one of the most deprived areas in inner city multi-ethnic Lambeth.

The Springfield Community Charity is based on the ground floor of Brocket House, which is one of the blocks in the Springfield Estate. This estate, comprising some 1500 units, is one of the most deprived areas in inner city multi-ethnic Lambeth. Tom's Trust contributes to the cost of a Youth Development Helper to work with disadvantaged young people on the estate.

The centre of activities for the young people is the Adventure Playground, administered and supervised by the Springfield Community. Opening every day at 3.30pm it is a popular meeting place for the kids. It includes a 2-storey cabin with facilities for billiards, ping-pong, a study/classroom, kitchen, computer IT room and a recording studio. This enables staff to help children with science & technology, and also Maths GCSE. The American Bank fund the repair and maintenance of the playground equipment, which include swings, slides, climbing frames and a 'tree-house', coming once every 3 months, as safety checks are essential.

Springfield also runs an early year Session Club for 2 to 4 year-olds, which has about 30 attendees. The community is ethnically very mixed; about a third Caribbean, mostly Jamaican, and a third Portugese who came to escape Salazar. There are also Nigerians who were escaping the Biafran war and the most recent arrivals are Somalis and Eritreans. There is the inevitable problem with gangs in the area.