From establishing a community radio station to offering exercise classes for toddlers, the Cambuslang and Rutherglen Community Health Initiative has certainly made its mark during its ten year life.

Since it’s foundations as the Cambuslang and Rutherglen Healthy Living Initiative in January 2002, the project has been at the heart of the community.

And the initiative’s staff have lots of plans for future developments.

The initiative’s director Brendan Rooney said: “Over the years we’ve had international visits from Texas and Northern Ireland and ministerial launches from the Scottish Government as well.

"There’s a uniqueness to our work. Over the last six months we’ve been spending a lot of time reviewing our strategic plans. We have definitely evolved over the years and we're looking to adapt our model to be a Community Development Trust."

The project’s history stems back to 1997 and the UK Government’s pledge to spend millions on healthy living.

The focus on changing the stereotype of Scotland as being the ‘sick man of Europe’ was the motivation, and, in 2002, five years of funding was secured to establish a health initiative in the Cambuslang and Rutherglen area.

The initial project was run by a mix of local residents and local staff. Despite the project becoming more professional during that time, Brendan says it hasn't lost its community heart.

He said: “The initiative didn’t have the best of starts but it’s better to be sleeping for the first six months of a five year grant than at any other time.

“I’d been working in Ayrshire for eight and a half years when I joined and I was excited to work in my own community and be back at home.

“One of the fundamental steps was to ensure that that our board of directors would consist entirely of residents. Most of our staff live locally and we have 120 volunteers who are predominantly local people.

“We would not be where we are without the work of these volunteers, our volunteering programme has been a rip-roaring success, and we’ve had at least 100 volunteers every year since 2005.”

The Cambuslang and Rutherglen CHI, as it is now known, focuses its effort on six areas identified by the community as being areas of concern. Those areas are substance misuse, diet and healthy eating, fitness and exercise, mental and emotional health and wellbeing, volunteering and communication, information and dialogue.

Realising that there had to be a good way to get information across to members of the public, a community radio station was created. It became Camglen Radio.

Brendan said: “We realised that there were lots of things going on in the community but people didn’t know how to access them. We added Camglen Radio to our healthy and happy family and it’s been a pleasure.

“It involves local people and allows them to share what’s going on in Cambuslang and Rutherglen.

“With CHI we like to think that we’re the glue binding the policy makers and local community together. That’s why we believe the model of a community trust communities is the way forward.”

The CHI works closely with South Lanarkshire Council and NHS Lanarkshire to deliver projects in the community and has recently taken over The Den which is a drop-in service for young people in the area.

The initiative’s other success stories include the Fruit Barra which provides low cost, high quality fruit and vegetables, the Healthy Mums Programme which offers workshops to parents and toddlers and the Voluntary Inclusion Project (VIP) which works to reduce the stigma that's related to mental health issues.

However the initiative has also moved into generating its own income.

Brendan said: “We also came to understand in 2008/2009 that we needed to generate some of our own income, grant funding was reducing, it was challenging and so we started to anticipate that’s we need to broaden our remit and looked at philanthropic fundraising.

“We now have a Smoothie Bike and have Camglen Radio parties. At the moment they are focused on young people but we’re going to be branching out - any profit is reinvested back into the initiative.

“We have grown and we have evolved in a very challenging environment.

“I’ve been in this sector for 21 years and this is the toughest its been, but we have a reputation, we deliver a very ambitious vision and view and we are more relevant now than ever.”

IN DETAIL

• Cambuslang and Rutherglen Community Health Initiative