CoLab Exeter is pleased to announce the award of a three year Comic Relief grant to develop a city-wide Exeter Homeless Partnership (EHP); A Safe Place to Be.

The partnership will bring together people with experience of homelessness, together with statutory, voluntary, business, and community sectors. By increasing understanding of the issue and co-designing community-led solutions, EHP hopes to bring swift and positive changes in people’s lives.

Designed and led by the local community, the Partnership will create a Homelessness Charter and Action Groups to test alternative ways of giving to mobilise, engage the public and raise funds for what is truly needed.

Involving the whole community with EHP’s mission to end homelessness in the city, this project will listen, learn and be ambitious for the homeless communities of Exeter.

The Partnership will engage with Street Support Network which is designed to assist homeless people in getting the help they need. Street Support is an initiative connecting organisations that provide services, with individuals and businesses that want to help the issue of homelessness. Street Support also connects the local community to better understand how they can help and what is being done by services in the city to end homelessness.

Fiona Carden from CoLab Exeter commented:

‘We’re delighted to be awarded the three-year Comic Relief grant. The way support is designed and delivered will lead to structural changes in the way homelessness is addressed and understood.  No one agency can end homelessness – it has to be a collective effort with everyone being involved.’

EHP will create a website to share information and ideas and create a forum where communities across the city can ask questions and share ideas.