Simple Life ranks #1 for Social Impact!

1 February 2023

Simple Life has been recognised for their Social Impact across the North West at the Insider Residential Property Awards 2023, as they are announced as winners of this category!

The entry was focussed on Sigma’s ‘Learning outside the classroom’ initiatives, which included:

‘Building for my future – Outward Bound Trust partnership’

Sigma has joined forces with the Outward Bound Trust in Ullswater, to offer groups of 12, 15-18 year olds a free 5 day activity packed trip, completely funded by Sigma.

The focus is on giving young people the opportunity to join other like-minded individuals in a strength and character-building programme, which involves using outdoor activities as the vehicle to develop skills and attributes in young people. Activities include, ghyll scrambling, canoeing, abseiling, challenging overnight wild camping expeditions, rock climbing and many more. The trip is designed to help teenagers prepare key skills as they take their next steps in life.

Applications are open to everyone! Including Simple Life residents, Sigma employees, charity partners, suppliers and anyone referred. The first course took place in April 2022, with the second trip taking place on w/c 24^th October. Following the success of the first year, Sigma has committed to funding two trips every year for the foreseeable with two members of the Simple Life team joining each trip.

Clever Cogz Escape Room Roadshow

Late 2021 and again in 2022, Sigma partnered with its very own Simple Life North West resident business ‘Clever Cogz’ mobile escape rooms. Clever Cogz is centred around delivering an escape room, team building experience with educational themes and benefits for schools. In 2021, Simple Life delivered a ‘lost temple’ escape room which was focused on learning about mental health and raising awareness for wellness and kindness with participants racing against the clock to learn about and collect all the wellness crystals. The 2021 escape room visited three schools across the NW region, allowing free exclusive use of the escape room for the local schools for one day, with the escape room being available for resident families to attend the consecutive day.

In 2022, the Simple Life/Clever Cogz escape room roadshow, took to the NW again and once complete, it is set to visit a further six schools close to Simple Life developments, with an enchanted rainforest theme filled with literacy based tasks.

Park Palace Ponies – £30,000 donation for new Merseyside riding centre

Sigma has supported local, not for profit equestrian centre, Park Palace Ponies in Merseyside for the last 5 years.

The volunteer-led equestrian programme, which teaches inner-city children from deprived neighbourhoods horse riding basics, had been crowdfunding since failing to receive public funding, as hoped.

Following Sigma’s donation, the charity has been able to open a much larger riding school at Walkers’ Woods, in Aigburth. The stables will accommodate up to 120 riders, a third of whom live in the 10% most deprived neighbourhoods in the country and half live in the 30% most deprived neighbourhoods.

Sigma has played a key part in the success of the riding school to date by spearheading and funding Park Palace Ponies first school relationship, which has paved the way for many further school partnerships.

Moving forward, Simple Life plans to arrange free riding lessons for groups of Simple Life children across its Merseyside developments.

Simple Life development Book Boxes / Book Share Scheme

Sigma has partnered with Ground Neutral to install book boxes across its schemes in the North West, making literature easily accessible and affordable for all. In order for an authentic community to be formed, residents need to be central to that, with them taking on a role or responsibility for community aspects within their neighbourhoods. We have therefore invited residents to register their interest in becoming a ‘book guardian’ and for a book box to be installed in their front garden for other residents to share free books.

All book boxes are made from re-purposed wood and created by Ground Neutral apprentices.

The Impact

As our ‘learning outside the classroom’ initiatives are not tied to one specific scheme but have served all Simple Life developments across the UK, here are some stats to showcase reach amongst our NW Simple Life region only:

The ‘Building for my future’ course and the Clever Cogz roadshow were open to all our Simple Life residents across the North West, serving over 2506 households across 27 completed developments. The educational themed escape rooms have been booked 9 times for schools across the North West, often catering for one or two full year groups a day.

We currently have book boxes across 10 NW schemes, serving over 1185 households, with a further 4 additional book boxes scheduled to be installed at a further 4 NW sites, serving an additional 284 households.

Opened in 2017, as part of a six-month pilot scheme to measure the demand for the inner-city riding school, Park Palace Ponies has put 3,000 Merseyside children through a basic riding course to date.

We’re really proud to involve not only our residents, but their businesses, our staff and suppliers across all our social initiatives. We feel the involvement of all, is key to building greater, genuine communities, gaining greater impact and creating a sense of belonging/pride that comes with being part of the Simple Life brand.

Simple Life was also shortlisted as Residential Operator of the Year and their development.

ESG News

Simple Life ranks #1 for Social Impact!

share this article