Founded by local residents over 35 years ago, Heart of BS13 works to address the barriers that limit opportunities for people in Hartcliffe and Withywood compared to the rest of Bristol.

We spoke to Rachel Baker, Marketing and Communications Manager for Heart of BS13, to learn more about their community-led approach and why they chose Triodos for their business savings.

1. Can you tell us a bit about Heart of BS13 - what are your mission and values?

Heart of BS13 was established in 1990 because our community in South Bristol faces significant barriers to health and wellbeing. In Hartcliffe and Withywood, less than 2% of young people go into higher education, there are limited local work opportunities, and life expectancy is almost 10 years lower than in more affluent areas of the city. 

We work to reduce these health inequalities. It's about creating the same opportunities for healthier lives that people have elsewhere in Bristol - making them accessible and local. We do this through programmes that support people's physical and mental health, connecting them with nature, creating volunteer and training opportunities, and building community connections.

 2. How do you tackle these issues within the community? 

It's about putting resources in Hartcliffe and Withywood that give people the same chances as other parts of the city - and making it easy for people to get involed. 

We offer practical programmes and courses designed to support people to have better diets, and to reduce the risk of people experiencing diet-related ill health or food insecurity.

Our slow cooker club runs every winter. Everyone who takes part gets a fuel-efficient electric slow cooker, ingredients and recipes and support The idea is to make it easier for people to prepare nutritious, affordable meals at home - tackling both food poverty and fuel poverty.

We know you can't talk about healthy eating if people can't afford food in the first place or don't have facilities to cook it. That's why we always want to keep to really practical approaches that recognise the actual challenges that people face. Since the pandemic we’ve given out over 150,000 free meals to local residents who are at risk of food insecurity in our community via our Community Freezer, helping to keep families out of crisis. 

Much of the climate action work we done over the last few years is about showing our young people that they can be changemakers and that there is a whole world of opportunities and careers out there that you can get involved in.

Our sustainable flower farm is a space where people can volunteer, where people can do educational programmes. We work with schools in the community, so students can come in and do gardening and composting and get to see an environmentally focused business happening in Hartcliffe. We also offer a free qualification in horticulture for people who have low or no qualifications, which supports employability. 

Our roundhouse community space gives people access to nature through forest school sessions, volunteering and the community events that we organise. 

3. Why is community-led action so important?

Local people know what their communities need. Places like Hartcliffe and Withywood have often been excluded from decisions that affect them. When change comes from within the community, it shows people they have power to make a difference where they live.

4. How important is it to you that your organisations’ savings are used to support positive social and environmental change?

We moved our savings to Triodos Bank because of their better interest rates. This practical consideration is important for a charity – we need our reserves to work as hard as possible for our mission, and better returns mean more resources for our community programmes.

But it also matters that Triodos is transparent about where the money goes. As a charity addressing health inequalities and climate change, we wouldn’t want to be in a position where our money was being invested in industries that harm communities like ours.

With Triodos we know that, even while our savings are just sitting there, they’re still in some way going to be supporting the kind of changes we're working towards.

Social and environmental change, and ensuring communities aren't left behind - those are things we’re committed to, and we wanted our money to be looked after by an organisation that shared those commitments.