Creating a culture of kindness: Eildon’s acts of kindness
Eildon Housing Assocation's Customer Engagement Officer shares her experience of community involvement and Eildon’s commitment to caring.
SFHA have created ‘Creating a culture of kindness’ network which hosts over 80 members in the sector, and met every six weeks to discuss relevant topics such as how to embed kindness, kindness in policy and processes and how to embed kindness from the bottom up.
Eildon Housing Association’s values are Caring, Committed, Connected and Creative. Customer Engagement Officer, Lita McHale was attracted to her role at Eildon as she connected to the values and wanted to care for the tenants and residents in the community and knew Eildon would encourage this way of working.
Due to covid-19, Lita’s role changed greatly with practices in working remotely becoming the new norm. Through Eildon Makes a Difference, a companywide initiative where staff can take specific leave for a day a year to volunteer with local community groups or charities. Lita has volunteered at several activities in the community such as Christmas carolling for sheltered housing residents. In previous years Lita helped with the Cash for Kids initiative which distributes Christmas presents, Lita described this as ‘extremely beneficial for the community and for our team building development as an organisation’
Lita worked with a local group within Eildon’s Extra Care development to secure funding and create more dementia friendly aspects in the garden area. A Summer house is now in place and through discussions, with existing contractors', community benefits are being accessed to paint this. They are also working towards establishing a Community Garden by partnering with local charities, the garden will be based beside the allotments in another area of the Scottish Borders to encourage social, physical and food awareness aspects in the community.
Eildon demonstrate their four values by being involved in the communities and motivating tenant engagement. Lita has great job satisfaction in her role which reflects massively in the projects, work, and volunteering she is a part of.
We have had a brilliant response from this area of work and meetings, and we are eager to continue to develop further with our members. Sign up at innovation@sfha.co.uk