‘We help people to aspire to do better’
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Katrina MacNab wants to identify the gaps in community activity.
PULTENEYTOWN People’s Project is a difficult organisation to label, according to Katrina MacNab. The chief executive officer describes the running the organisation as a “balancing act” of working as a business and providing key support to the close-knit community of Wick’s Pulteneytown.
At the beating heart of the operation is a group of like-minded individuals who are striving to make life better in their community, Mrs MacNab explained.
PPP offers a multitude of recreational, social, educational, work and support classes and schemes that are aimed at everyone, from newborns and their mums to elderly widows learning to cope after the death of a loved one.
However, the classes all have a common theme, said Mrs MacNab – they are all there to help people improve their own situation.
“The underlying aspect in everything we do is to get people to aspire to do the best they can,” she said. “What you aspire to in your fifties is different from what you aspire to if you are a teenager – but we try to get everyone to aspire to do better for themselves.”
She estimates that between 400 to 500 people walk through their doors every week, from age one to 100, all with the aim of improving their life.
The organisation draws the community into the five properties located at the top of Murchison Street with a huge variety of classes which keep the revenue coming in and provide, amongst other things, education, advice, help, fun and, arguably, a sense of community.
From art classes to college access courses, job clubs to social and sporting projects, PPP aims to provide a hub for the area where people can not only get informed but can also feel part of something bigger.
SINCE PPP’s inception in 2004, the original purpose of providing some activity in the area has evolved and now its work extends much further out of the community and much deeper into the lives of the locals, Mrs MacNab said.
“When we went to people when we first set up they told us there was nothing to do in the area. It wasn’t just young people, but an older generation too, people in their forties and fifties and older,” she said. “So we started classes to try and generate a buzz and some vitality in the area.”
She added that the 26 full-time staff members often find themselves doing tasks that are not part of their paid job but which still benefit the community.
“We have staff that do housing support but we’ve had cases when someone has come in and maybe they needed a hand for the afternoon.
“It’s not really our job, but because we have the staff we’ve been able to go and help,” she said. “We can afford the time and staff to help people with other things, like putting out their dustbins.”
She added: “These staff members are getting paid at the same time to do their ‘real’ job and if they weren’t getting paid then we wouldn’t be able to do the additional little bits.”
Mrs MacNab explained that there are a number of misconceptions about PPP.
“People think we live off of grants but we don’t at all,” she said. “We’ve got service-level agreements, MAASK (the morning and after-school club) gets a small grant from Children in Need and then it’s fee-paying. We make money doing things like the holiday club, which goes on to subsidise the after-school club.”
Mrs MacNab said perceptions of the group seem to vary, even to those who are involved. Its wide-ranging programme is spread through the week, meaning many people don’t see or know about other classes and projects.
“I think the perception is that we just work with poor people but that’s not at all the case,” she explained.
“We work with a lot of affluent people but they, like everyone else, are just looking for some company.”
