The Hopeman Community Bus

The Hopeman community minibus has been a lifeline for so many community members. This valuable service runs solely with the help and support of dedicated volunteers from the Board of Trustees to the drivers. 

The bus serves a few small communities along the Moray coast- there are only about 1600 people in each village. Many of them don’t have the ability to visit cemeteries, shops, the medical centre without a great deal of effort expense and time – the bus, run by local volunteers, and with local knowledge, make a great deal of difference. The volunteer that takes the calls and does the bookings recognises that many of the people calling also need to chat – they live alone and don’t see many people.

The service is currently in a stage of growth and change, which can create logistical issues for those with very limited time to progress this.  

Outside the Box was able to provide some limited staff support to enable important progress to be made. During this period of flux, we have been able to support the Trustees by supporting identifying gaps in infrastructure and suggesting ways to bridge them. 

We assisted with: 

• Identifying a filing cabinet (free) and implementing a more robust filing system. This means that everything is under one room where previously it was spread across the Trustees’ homes. 
• We looked at the financial systems and what needed to be updated including updating the banking. 
• Updated the Trustees register and helped to create a members register to reflect constitutional changes being progressed.
• Supported the completion of funding applications. 
• Organised a First Aid training course for the volunteers. This was also opened up to other local coastal communities in Moray. 
• Initiated a new service with a local community who had seen the closure of its local post office. The Bus will offer a weekly service to Hopeman in order to access the post office here. 
• Created contacts with a local dementia services provider. We are exploring the possibility of transporting local community members to this support service in Elgin. 

The Hopeman Community Bus is a positive example of what can happen when like-minded people come together to seek solutions to local problems! Our aim is to continue to use the community bus to support social connections and wellbeing across the remote rural community by helping people to remain independent, access health provision and continue to be active members of their communities.

The Hopeman Community Bus has been shortlisted for Community Transport Provider of the Year Award at the 2023 Community Transport Awards. You can read more about this wonderful achievement here: https://ctauk.org/community-transport-awards-2023-finalists/

You can read more about our Coastal Connections project here: https://otbds.org/projects/coastal-connections/

This work is happening thanks to an award from The National Lottery Community Fund, made possible by National Lottery players.