This is a community voice column published by the Hereford Times on August 29.

Annie Fisher, director of @the Hub CIC

@The Hub is an exciting new community space in Ross-on-Wye.

It is a self-funded community project – a space for all,to improve quality and conditions of life, to develop skills and to meet local needs. A safe place, a haven, a place of respite.

How do you measure success? We found the time today to sit down and crunch some numbers.

We have been open 10 weeks. In those 10 weeks we have had 971 visits.

We have supported 122 individuals with issues ranging from social isolation to housing, mental health problems, benefits, debt and general wellbeing. A third of those people were socially isolated or lonely. A quarter had an identifiable concern surrounding alcohol or drug use, a quarter needed help with housing issues.

We have made 49 referrals to other agencies,including the Ross Community Larder, which is the local food bank, the Household Support Fund, Taurus Healthcare,  Turning Point, the Housing and Homeless support team and the Healthy Lifestyles Coach.

Our shower facilities (open for two weeks) have been used eight times. This is huge, not only for us but for our lovely service users.

These people are not able to access other washing facilities, as there are no other publicly available showers in Ross.

We have served 290 lunches. We serve lunch on a Wednesday, during our Warm Welcome sessions, which are open to all between 10am and 2pm.

We call that a success!

We would like to thank the whole community for coming together to make this project work. These figures validate the hard work of everyone involved. We couldn’t have done it without you!

We are happy to announce that we have received two further grants since opening, which has done wonders for our future-planning.

However, we are actively looking for monthly sponsorship to allow us to continue our work and to expand into different areas.

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What are your thoughts?

You can send a letter to the editor to have your say by clicking here.

Letters should not exceed 250 words and local issues take precedence.

Please have a look at our webpage if you would like to see what a difference you or your company could make to the lives of people in Ross-on-Wye.

To sum up, in the words of Confucius, those who say it cannot be done should not interrupt those who are doing it.

If you would like to find out more, please head to our website or Facebook page. https://www.facebook.com/ atthehubross https://at-the-hub.co.uk/