Our Stories: Meet Kelly

Meet Kelly from Cross Green Growing Together

“I’m the Community Development Officer at Cross Green Growing Together. We run gardening groups on a Monday, coffee mornings every Thursday and our Digital Skills sessions are after the coffee morning. We also run other projects like after school groups and batch cooking sessions for families, and events like harvest festival and bonfire night. 

We got a grant from the Leeds Digital Inclusion Fund to support people in the community with technology. I think the word ‘digital’ can scare people, so we’re trying to embed digital skills in all the groups using tablets. That way it’s accessible for people and they can learn how to use technology in everyday life. 

The after school group have loved making stop-motion animation, and we’ll use the tablets in the garden with Google Lens. In the cooking group, people can use them to find recipes online, order the food and get it delivered. They’re learning transferrable skills without even realising! 

We have a lot of transient families that live here – asylum seekers, refugees and people in emergency housing. It can be quite intimidating when they first arrive. The area sometimes doesn’t feel very safe, but this is a safe place. The families know there’s a good community here. They’ve made friends, their children have made friends. We’ve gained people’s trust. They feel safe talking to us, and we can signpost them to other things. 

What we’re doing is working, and you can see the benefit it’s having on the families and community that we work with. I love being here and all the people I work with. You make a difference, and you can see it. It’s very rewarding work.” 

Cross Green Growing Together host a range of activities at their community garden and hub. From gardening groups and cooking sessions, to after school clubs and coffee mornings they take a holistic approach to meeting the needs of their residents. They’ve had a number of grants from Leeds Community Foundation, including a Leeds Digital Inclusion Fund grant to support their digital skills sessions.