I have lived and worked in Newham for a decade and I’m constantly learning about the borough and the people that live here. I have a passion for improving the local environment and enabling as many people as possible to walk and cycle more, to help people live healthier lives and to make the borough a better place to live.

Change can be difficult; I have worked with schools, community groups, and individual residents; and led the delivery of infrastructure and traffic management projects, to enable behaviour change.

Ben Addy is the Head of Collaborative Design for Sustrans London. Ben has extensive experience in the management and delivery of exemplar community engagement and collaborative design projects and programmes.

Leading the Collaborative Design Team in London, he understands meaningful engagement is essential in reimagining London’s streets and spaces and increasing equity in the city.

Sustrans is the charity making it easier for people to walk and cycl, the work they're doing creates healthier places and happier people.

Katherine Jacob has 20 years worth of experience in community development and project management in Glasgow, Bristol and London. Her previous roles include work with Age UK, Origin Housing, Lambeth Healthwatch, Harlesden Crisis and leading community projects. She has been working for 2.5 years with Living Streets as London Manager, running a small team which has delivered projects in Brent, Merton, City of London, Barking & Dagenham, Redbridge, Havering and Camden. She has experience of school streets, LTN, public engagement, healthy street audits, school route audits, WOW (Walk To School), play streets. Last summer, she also led engagement in Brent around their 9 Healthy Neighbourhoods programme (low traffic neighbourhoods).

Living Streets is a national charity with bases in Scotland, Wales, North England and London, which just celebrated its 90th birthday. It used to be known as the Pedestrian Association – established in 1929 as a campaigning organisation. It has achieved major and lasting changes including pedestrian crossings (1934), speed limits (1934), the Highway Code (1931) and the national driving test (1934). More recent successes include WOW Walk To School programme (using software Travel Tracker), School Route Audits and Community Street Audits to critically assess the walking environment. Living streets' current campaign is to ban pavement parking.

Rebecca Trevalyan creates and lives in places where she can build, eat, share and learn with others. She helps build neighbourhoods that have everything we need within a 15 minute walk. She previously set up community assets and infrastructure like Impact Hub Brixton, Open Project Night, People's Fridge Brixton, which emerged out of innovation programmes she led on local space/ food/ education systems.

One of her long-term projects is Library of Things - a social enterprise that helps people save money and reduce waste by affordably renting out useful Things like drills, sound systems and sewing machines from local spaces. We're active in libraries and community hubs across London & soon the South East. We are looking for community organisations, councils, manufacturers and funders who believe this should exist in neighbourhoods everywhere.

A current project Rebecca Trevalyan is leading is a programme called Platform - to change property uses, practice and ownership in UK town centres.

Sharon Prince has lived in Newham for 25 years and been part of GoodGym since 2016.

Goodgym is a community of people who are getting fit by doing good. Goodgym started in Tower Hamlets 2009 and came to Newham in 2014.

Goodgym Newham have been involved in various projects including a race trip to Bruges and the Goodgym Olympics.

John is the Debt, Benefits & Employment Rights Team Leader for Our Newham Money.

Newham is the first Local Authority in the UK to establish an Employment Rights Hub.

The Employment Rights Hub, Our Newham Money, is key to delivering on the Mayor's Community Wealth Building agenda, to ensure economic growth in Newham is shared locally. The Mayor is putting people at the heart of everything the council does to ensure that you, our residents, have access to financial support whatever your circumstances.

Our Newham Money offers support to Newham residents who may be struggling with debt or the everyday cost of living. We are a free confidential service and here to help you secure financial wellbeing.

https://www.ournewhammoney.co.uk/

Noel is the Head of Policy & Research at London Borough of Newham. He is passionate about mobilising the collective creativity of people around local places and bringing people together from different walks of life to make a difference in their places. He brings experience in strategy, transformation, insight, service design and change, as well as a co-founder of a cultural organisation.

His service helps develop activities that helps the organisation better understand the needs & experiences of residents, develop strategic priorities and translating them into practical commitments, and developing strategic partnerships and attracting funding into the borough. It also leads the development of Citizen Assemblies.

Every One Every Day is a groundbreaking initiative in London’s borough of Barking and Dagenham which aims to give people living and working in the area the practical tools they need to improve their lives and the lives of their family, friends and neighbours. 6,000+ people are already involved in making their neighbourhood better by hosting growing, making, repairing, connecting, learning and cooking projects across the borough. Every One Every Day operates out of 6 neighbourhood spaces and one large maker space ‘the Warehouse’ that are places for idea incubation, sharing and learning.

Iris Schoenherr’s role is to design inclusive and low risk programmes that incubate collaborative and co-operative businesses in food, ceramic, wood work, childcare, recycled plastic, textiles and much more.

Kul Sanghera is one of the partners in Partap Fashion Fabrics, established in 1970 on Green Street. He was brought up in the area and has seen the changes over time. He has worked here and in Southall in his family business.

Kul Sanghera was also on the committee of the Southall Chamber of commerce and Green Street CIC and is currently Chairman of the Green Street Traders Association as well as a partner and director in several companies.

Matthew Jaffa is the Federation of Small Businesses’ chief London spokesperson and leads on London policy issues affecting small businesses, including economic policy. He also worked in the national policy team on education and skills, and transport policy.

The Federation of Small Businesses (FSB) is a membership organisation representing small and medium-sized businesses throughout the UK.

Prior to working at the FSB, Matthew Jaffa worked in the Cabinet Office in the Better Regulation Executive looking at European Regulatory Impact Assessment and the Strategy Unit, where he was a researcher on various strategic projects.

Matthew Jaffa will be talking about the importance of small businesses, shopping locally, how we must ensure they get paid on time, procurement and the importance of spending locally. And all the impacts of government policies on growth.