Building Bridges - Colin Crooks

This week I was invited to join the 800th anniversary of the City Bridge Trust, a brilliant organisation who have husbanded the tolls and fees from crossing London Bridge in the medieval period to fund the building of all the bridges into the City including Tower Bridge and most recently the millennium bridge. In addition to that they have been incredibly supportive of all sorts of organisations (including Green-Works!) that help develop a sense of social cohesion in the capital. A bridge is a powerful metaphor and it reminded me of the our ambition in Green-Works – to provide a bridge between the corporate organisation with lots of redundant furniture and the local community group or small business that is real need of decent reliable furniture at a sensible cost. This is our main mission but as we’ve done this we have seen that there is an even bigger bridge to build: the bridge that links the green movement to society. So many people think that being green is an altruistic and expensive commitment with little benefit locally or to the community. Green-Works sets out to demonstrate a very clear link: being Green actually Works and being Green creates Work. Over the last 9 years we have engaged with hundreds of unemployed people from all sorts of backgrounds training them and employing them. In this very direct way we have shown the connection and hopefully as this blog develops you will see other connections………