What Recognition Means: RISE Projects Named Haringey Community Hero 2025
RISE Projects has been named a Community Hero at the 2025 Haringey Heroes Awards. For us, the recognition is not simply about one evening or one achievement. It reflects years of showing up consistently for young people, families and residents across Haringey.
Recognition for the work that happens every week
Awards capture a moment. Community work usually happens in a very different way. It happens through regular sessions, conversations, phone calls, referrals, workshops and the repeated act of being available when somebody needs support.
On 15 May 2025, some of that quieter work was recognised publicly when RISE Projects was announced as a winner at the Haringey Heroes Awards, which celebrate people and organisations making a difference across the borough.
Being named a Community Hero was significant for us because the award recognised not one isolated project, but the wider contribution RISE has been building across Haringey. It belongs as much to the residents who trust us, the volunteers who give their time and the partners who work alongside us as it does to the organisation itself.
Community Hero
Recognition of RISE Projects’ contribution to local residents and the organisation’s commitment to consistent, grassroots community work across Haringey.
What sits behind an award like this?
By the time an organisation reaches a stage to collect an award, most of the work being recognised has already happened away from the spotlight.
For RISE, that has meant young people taking part in sport, mentoring and activities that give them somewhere positive to spend their time. It has meant helping residents navigate housing and welfare issues, bringing health services closer to communities that do not always engage easily with mainstream provision, and creating spaces where families can meet, ask questions and build relationships.
The activities are different, but the approach underneath them is remarkably consistent. Start with trust. Be present. Listen to what people are telling you. Bring the right support closer when possible and create opportunities for people to move forward.
Positive spaces
Sport, mentoring and youth activities that build relationships, confidence and opportunity.
Services closer to people
Community health activity and partnerships designed around trust, prevention and accessible engagement.
Connection and belonging
Spaces where residents can meet, participate, build networks and connect with organisations and services.
Practical support
Helping residents understand their options, navigate systems and reach the right sources of support.
“Real change begins at community level, with trust, collaboration and consistency.”
Awale Elmi, Director of RISE Projects
What recognition means to a grassroots organisation
Recognition matters, particularly for organisations whose work can be difficult to capture in a single photograph or statistic. Grassroots organisations often work in the space between formal services and everyday community life, responding quickly, maintaining relationships and helping people navigate systems that can otherwise feel distant or complicated.
Much of that contribution is cumulative. A weekly group may not appear dramatic on its own, but over months it can create friendships, confidence and routes into support. A youth activity may begin as somewhere to play sport and develop into a trusted relationship through which somebody asks for help with employment or education.
The award therefore felt less like recognition of a single programme and more like recognition of the model RISE has been trying to build: a community organisation that remains close enough to residents to understand what is changing around them.
RISE Projects at the Haringey Heroes Awards
Watch highlights from the 2025 awards and the moment RISE’s community work was recognised alongside other people and organisations making a difference across Haringey.
Part of a much wider community effort
One of the most valuable parts of the evening was being in a room with so many other people whose work contributes to life across Haringey. Community organisations do not operate in isolation. They exist within networks of residents, volunteers, public services, businesses and other local organisations.
The Haringey Heroes Awards offered a reminder of how much of the borough’s strength comes from people who decide to act where they live. Some do that through established organisations, others through volunteering, business, neighbourhood activity or years of personal commitment to a particular community.
RISE is proud to be one part of that wider ecosystem.
Recognition brings responsibility too
An award is encouraging, but it cannot become the destination. For us, recognition also creates a responsibility to keep improving the organisation behind the work.
That means strengthening the quality of our programmes, improving how we understand and report impact, developing better pathways for residents and young people, and building partnerships that can bring more opportunities into the communities we serve.
The most meaningful response to being called a Community Hero is therefore not simply to celebrate the title. It is to return to the work with greater ambition.
We are grateful to Haringey Council and the Haringey Heroes panel for recognising RISE, and to every resident, participant, volunteer, member of staff and partner who has helped shape the organisation.
The award belongs to the community behind the work.
Recognition is important, but our focus remains the same: creating trusted spaces, practical support and opportunities that help people and communities move forward.