About The Red Bench Project
How at all started
The Red Bench Project was set up in 2023 by founder Wayne Rambo Groves, a suicide survivor. As someone who has been through those rough times himself with his depression and mental health issues and even a few suicide attempts, he eventually decided enough is enough. Over the last few years he has been figuring out how best to battle his demons as sadly there is no one easy fix for all.
Then in 2022 after his friend Mick passed away, Wayne had a crazy idea about having a bench at his go to place at the beach, a place where he would often go to clear his head, where he had said he wanted a memorial bench placed when he died. But he thought, why wait until he died, why not get one now and use it as a way to help other people the way it helped him.
After his idea had been rejected by a few different people, he had a chance meeting with South Tyneside Council Leader Tracey Dixon, who loved the idea and the passion shown, she helped make it a reality. So in July 2023 the very first red bench was placed near his go to spot on the promenade of South Shields sea front. Since then several more benches have been installed in various hot-spots around South Tyneside thanks to the kind donations of people and businesses who have all got behind The Red Bench Project, with more coming soon to other areas in the north east and even around the UK, which is great to see, but sad to see that these benches are so badly needed.
How does The Red Bench Project Work?
Our aim is to place our benches at or near suicide hot-spots where they can then be used in several ways. Firstly it is a place for people to go to collect their thoughts, to sit and reflect, to think and hopefully calm down and not do anything drastic. Whilst there, they can find help on our benches as each one will have a plaque on with the phone number for the Samaritans and a QR code that directs them to this website where the first thing they will see is the GET HELP NOW option. Clicking on this will give them a list of issues that they may be dealing with, these options in turn will open up to a list of all of the help they can get, a list of all of the services, charities and groups who can help them, along with info on how to contact them.
Secondly our benches can be used as a silent cry for help. We know that a lot of people feel like they can’t speak to family and friends for fear of being judged, letting them down, disappointing them or more. Even though that is not the case, it is often how we feel at that moment in time. So by sitting on one of our benches you are saying to passers-by that you are struggling and may need some help or support, an ear to listen, a shoulder to cry on, because for whatever reason, most people feel they can talk to a stranger without the fear of being judged, so our benches offer that. This works because of the message we put out about our benches…if you see someone sitting alone, please go and check on them, to see if they are all right. That one small act of kindness really can save a life.
Working Together?
The strength of The Red Bench Project is working together. We take pride in building relationships with the services, charities and groups that we promote, because if we all work together we can all achieve our goals. We know our strengths and our weaknesses so we are happy to ask those around us for help, and if they require help themselves then we will be there for them.
We all help and support each with the various promotions and events and in fact our committee includes a few people from other charities, like our treasurer Linda Dodds who is part of Help 4 You (formerly Yes You Can North East) along with Allan Dodds, then we have Tracy Beaton, the driving force behind Bede’s Helping Hands Food Bank K.A.V.S. We also have Rob Adamson who is our veteran specialist and part of Veterans For Veterans In Care as well as being part of the South Shields DLI, LI and Rifles Association, plus one of our volunteers is Lee James Moore who is one of the main people behind Veterans For Veterans In Care.
So with their combined knowledge and experience behind us it really does make this a big team effort. We also have our secretary Steven Paulsen plus volunteers Liam Christopher Walker and Jo Jo Marie whose late partner and my friend, Mick, is named on our very first bench.
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