The Good Heart celebrates five years of kindness

THE team at The Good Heart, Frome’s community centre for kindness, are celebrating the organisation’s fifth birthday and held a birthday party on Tuesday 25th July to mark the milestone.

Around 40 to 50 people attended to hear stories, eat cake and connect over a successful year.

There were photos, a video documenting last year’s makeover, flower garlands handed out to those who had made significant contributions, children’s pavement drawings and a display of a felt wall hanging, created in this year’s Kindness Festival, hung up by Frome’s Mayor cllr Philip Campagna.

Reflecting on highlights from the past year, director Alison Murdoch said, “The Kindness Festival is definitely up there, as that’s our annual opportunity to really platform kindness and to remind ourselves how important kindness is for our general wellbeing and happiness and be a place where people know they will get some kindness when they come.”

Throughout the winter, The Good Heart opened as a Warm Space to provide people who were struggling in the cost-of-living crisis with warmth and hot food and drinks. As well as helping those in need, that project gave way to the start of Tiny Hearts, a space for parents and children to meet and play, which continues to run.

Alison said, “We did the warm spaces all of last winter and we decided all our hot drinks would be free of charge, which we were really happy about. We opened six days a week over winter. Out of this came our Tiny Hearts project and that has been a huge success. What’s interesting now is that we are connecting with the more isolated families in town and we are really happy about that.”

The Warm Spaces project has also brought challenges for the team. Alison explained, “We had fantastic volunteers that kept the place open from 12pm to 7pm six days a week. We just got to meet all the people who were desperate in the middle of town. We have relationships with people and they feel safe coming to us and that’s actually very challenging as well, due to the uncertainty of it as you never know what’s going to happen or come in. Our experiences are that these people need to build relationships and not just be sent off to other services.”

Despite the challenges that also ensued as a result of the Covid pandemic, a weekly meditation session began, which continues to run online four days a week. Alison said, “We have four or five different meditation leaders. It’s non-religious, just a calm space at the start of the day. It’s free of charge and you can find the link on our website. It’s on Zoom at 9am in the morning, Monday to Thursday, and there has been people that have been doing it every day for over three years. They say it makes all the different to how their day goes.”

Sharing a story of kindness in action, Alison said, “Last winter there was a homeless person passing through Frome. He needed a mobile. He came in and said his had been stolen, so we put a notice on the notice board and within a couple of weeks, three different people brought in mobiles for him.”

“There’s loads of evidence about how kindness ripples out. We have had people tell us that we have saved their lives. I love the quote ‘kindness and compassion are not a luxury but an essential’ and I think it’s even more relevant given the difficulties so many people are facing in these times.”

Looking ahead, the team has been given £10,000 funding for next year’s Kindness Festival, as well as entering a new partnership with Focus Frome, the counselling service, who have started a weekly session for teenagers.

In September, The Good Heart will find out if they will have won in the BBC Radio Somerset’s Make a Difference awards.

Alison added, “Let’s hope The Good Heart can continue to share and spread kindness over the next five years and beyond.”