Sharon Hill is one of those people who just makes things happen. It’s no coincidence she runs Mayfield and Easthouses Development Trust (MAEDT), which locals pronounce “Made It”. Their slogan is “Making it Happen”, and Sharon and her team have been doing exactly that for the past ten years.

They serve a semi-rural ex-mining community outside Edinburgh, long affected by unemployment, health inequalities and chronic underinvestment. The area remains one of the most deprived in Midlothian. But today, if you walk into MAEDT’s lush and vibrant community garden, the story is one of care, connection and hope.

“Previously this was a bowling green that hadn’t been used for a very long time,” Sharon says, gesturing at the thriving garden. “The grass was waist high, the building was boarded up.” 

The green had been disused for decades, and the pavilion, shut after asbestos was found, was used by the council to store broken gym equipment. Back then, MAEDT had no centre for the community. The leisure centre had been flattened with leisure services moved to a newly built school, but there was no physical place for the community to call their own.  Despite being in the local development plan, there was no money for it.

Sharon wasn’t going to wait forever. She was going to make it happen. So MAEDT gradually moved into the bowling green and started to bring it back to life, serving teas and coffees around the broken treadmills.

It’s now a bustling village square – a place of safety and abundance.

Food is the key

Sunflowers loom over rows of pumpkins, with deep green kale swathed in netting to save it from the slugs. Raspberry bushes sway beside small fluttering wind turbines set against the polytunnel. Inside it’s bursting with life, rich with the scent of ripening tomatoes, arches of grapevines hang over a cosy seating corner, where people can retreat for a quiet moment amongst the plants.

Outside, a cluster of High School bee-keepers buzz around the hives, while nursery children learn how to grow vegetables. The once derelict pavilion now hosts a busy community café, where an older people’s walking group sits down to hot vegetable soup fresh from the garden. Across the road, MAEDT’s community pantry provides dignified access to good food for hundreds of residents.

“We’re growing food, we’re cooking food, we’re providing food,” says Phil Morris, who manages the pavilion and the garden, balancing jobs tending plants, teaching children, building and mending things, supporting volunteers, and everything in between.

Food is at the core of MAEDT’s philosophy. “When you feed someone, you’re nurturing them,” says Sharon. “Food loosens people’s tongues. If you’re eating soup, you’ll tell me things you wouldn’t mention anywhere else. You find out someone is sleeping on the floor because they don’t have a bed. And because we built that trust, we can help.”

The turning point

The pandemic changed everything. MAEDT stepped up when statutory services struggled to reach those most in need.

“They had to trust community organisations to do stuff. We were the ones on the ground,” recalls Sharon. “We were the ones peeling tatties and delivering food. We were the ones picking up prescriptions.”

Working with the Chair of the local Community Council to lead a team of volunteers on furlough, they cooked and delivered 250 two-course hot meals a day to isolated residents. But they delivered more than food. “I used to say to the volunteers, ‘remember, you’re not delivering mince and tatties. You’re delivering a wee bit of care, a wee bit of love.’”

MAEDT was there in this moment of crisis when people in the community didn’t know who to turn to. Sharon found herself fielding calls from people worried about their elderly parents, and from people who had never engaged with support services before, who suddenly found themselves with nothing to eat. “These people were mortified, ashamed,” she says. “I was getting people phoning me up who had never had to ask for help before.”

By showing up, responding to these calls with food and kindness, MAEDT earned something money can’t buy: absolute community trust and respect.

Dignity, not charity

Speaking with people every day meant MAEDT really understood their needs. They recognised that the need for access to affordable and healthy food wouldn’t end with lockdown. So they created the Community Pantry. Unlike a food bank, where parcels are pre-packed and choice is limited, the pantry operates like a shop. For £3.50 a week, residents can choose £15-£20 worth of food, as well as free fresh fruit and vegetables, sanitary products and bread.

“The difference between us and a food bank is choice,” Sharon explains. “And dignity. It’s a community pantry, not a poverty pantry. If you get a food parcel, you get tins of beans. If you come here, you can choose what you want to eat. You can give your kids a Nando’s on Friday night.”

The pantry has been a runaway success: 1,300 households have signed up in four years in a community of only 2,500 homes. Around 180 people shop there every week – some to help stretch tight budgets, some in crisis using it to survive. But because everyone shops together, there is no stigma.

MAEDT has also become a hub for other support. They host space for Citizens Advice sessions, skills training, career support, a school uniform exchange, and a £1 charity shop. They also step in with emergency funds, helping people with everything from beds and washing machines to electricity bills and nursery fees. These small acts are little miracles for people.

The wealth of belonging

If Community Wealth Building means anything, it means this. It is not about simple economics, but the health and wellbeing of a community. As Sharon puts it beautifully: “The wealth of the community is in the actual community.”

And data backs her up. A recent Social Value Engine analysis found that for every £1 invested in MAEDT, they generate £9.90 in value for the community. “If feelings had a value, we came out being worth £4.5 million to our local economy,” Sharon notes. “If belonging, empowerment, connection and reduced isolation were given a monetary value, we give ten times what people give us.”

Their success comes from the honesty, respect and trust they give their community. And they receive this in return. They don’t have problems with shoplifting or graffiti. Instead they receive a constant stream of donations and volunteers.

MAEDT is theirs. They are not presented with a finished product, but invited to make it better together. “They’ve seen it grow in response to what they’ve wanted,” says Sharon. They know there won’t suddenly be a huge influx of money, so they are building the kind of wealth they can, and that ultimately matters to people: the wealth of belonging.

Networks for growth

MAEDT hasn’t done it alone. Backing this community stand funders, networks and intermediary organisations. 

When Sharon first eyed the bowling green, she knew she was out of her depth. “I did not have a clue about gardening or growing food,” she laughs. “I was looking for pals.” 

She found them in Get Growing Scotland. They helped to plant the vision for the garden, from ideas for its layout to growing through the pandemic. Drawing on their work with communities across Scotland, they brought a unique set of knowledge that proved invaluable. Today, the garden stands as an exemplar for other communities looking to grow their own spaces.

Karen Moore from Get Growing reflects that every community needs more pioneers like Sharon: “They’re able to look out their window and see a piece of land and realise that’s what Community Wealth Building is, or can be – putting a literal stake in the ground and turning an unused space into a place where people meet, grow food, learn skills and connect.

For organisations like MAEDT, working on the front line of building wealth in their communities, intermediaries like Get Growing and Development Trusts Association Scotland (DTAS) are vital. They advocate for them, provide advice and expertise on everything from business plans to Community Asset Transfers. Or just to lay the foundations of a garden. They enable them to have the confidence and knowledge they need to achieve their visions with their communities.

“We work on the ground, directly supporting communities to secure and develop land, grow food and renew nature,” says Karen, “We harness their experiences and learning from across the country, share inspiration, innovation and practical ways to build community wealth for all.”

Funding the whole alphabet

But no amount of support can fix the broken funding model. Despite MAEDT’s undeniable success, they operate on a knife-edge, suffocated by bureaucracy and insecure funding.

“I need funding that doesn’t leave me in September thinking that in April I have no funding,” Sharon says with frustration. “The longest we’ve had is three years, and three years passes in the blink of an eye.”

Short-term funding doesn’t mean short-term work, but long-term insecurity. MAEDT keeps doing what the community needs long after project funding ends. “We’re funded to do A, B and C. Then A runs out, but we still do A because the community needs it. Before we know it, we’re doing the whole alphabet and we’re only funded for X, Y and Z.”

Spending so much valuable time chasing grants instead of delivering services is exhausting and inefficient, and erodes their capacity to invest long term and build the community wealth they are capable of.

“Treat us the same way we treat our community”

As Scotland debates the Community Wealth Building Bill, MAEDT’s story offers a clear lesson: communities know what they need and they are capable of delivering it. They just need the trust and resources to do it.

Sharon’s vision for the future is ambitious: a regenerated town centre with the pantry as an anchor tenant, a new community hub, a dry bar and an arts centre which would “make us sustainable”. 

Sharon is the chair of the town centre regeneration group, but that plan needs £50m. Sharon jokes that she’ll have to be wheeled there with a zimmer frame by the time that happens. Meanwhile she’s getting on and building MAEDT.

What Sharon and her team are doing in Mayfield and Easthouses is how community wealth is actually being built. But it is against the odds, and relying on heroic efforts. To support this credible and viable approach, Sharon says the relationship between government and community needs to change.

“The attitude of the local authority is still very paternal,” she says. “The general attitude is that they’re in charge and they know better.”

Her message to ministers is simple: “Treat us the same way we treat our community. Trust us. We do this work because we truly want the best for people. Respect that expertise and value it. Our destinations are the same. Respect us and support us, but trust us to do what we do.”

In Mayfield and Easthouses, MAEDT is showing what Community Wealth Building looks like. The evidence is in the soil bringing new life, in the buzzing café bringing new friendships, it’s in the pantry shelves, in the bowls of soup, and sunny days in the garden. It’s in the community. They have built something remarkable from the grassroots up. Now, they need a system that supports them to keep growing.

“Why not?” Sharon asks, looking across the flourishing garden. “Why would we not expect this to be here? We should all expect good things, nice things. We’re all worth that.”

 

Read more from our series This is Community Wealth Building and what we’re calling for to support Community Wealth Building across Scotland.