The MATISSE project identified a range of mobility related to physical accessibiliy, which, as a cocktail, customised to local needs can assist in reducing exclusion.

ECLIPSE has identified good practice examples where these measures related to avoidance have been successfully introduced and a selection of these are summarised below:

• Canterbury Rural Street Runner - Caterbury (UK)
• Wiltshire Food Bank - Wiltshire (UK)

Canterbury Rural Street Runner - Caterbury (UK)

The Canterbury ‘Rural Street Runner' provides mobile youth activities for young people in nine rural villages in the Canterbury area. It aims to provide a safe environment on a casual drop-in basis for 10-18 year olds and to run a ‘mobile youth club' for young people living in isolated rural areas who cannot get to other local youth facilities.

A vehicle, fitted with seating for three youth workers and equipped with computers, computer games, music packages, table top games, sports equipment and arts and craft equipment visits village halls and the equipment is unloaded for use during sessions.

In its first three months, 234 members had been registered and more than 50 volunteers had been recruited from the community.

The following groups of people are thought to have benefitted from the scheme;

•  the young people using the service

•  the volunteers involved with the project who are learning new skills

•  residents, who know that young people now have somewhere to go in the evenings

•  the parents of the children who are relieved of the need to transport them to other activities.

Wiltshire Food Bank - Wiltshire (UK)

Wiltshire Food Bank is a mobile service providing emergency food parcels to people living in rural areas around Salisbury in South Wiltshire in the UK who have hit a short term crisis in their lives. The project aims to reduce poverty and social exclusion in the area by using a vehicle to deliver emergency food boxes which include information on debt, education, workshops, healthcare and other issues to families in need, and to provide a link to other welfare organisations.

The Rural Food Bank has helped a growing number of people in crises with emergency food boxes. In 2003/2004 the project collected 17.8 tonnes of food, an increase over the total collected in 2002 and 2001.

Others who benefit include are thought to be the distributors themselves (e.g. social workers and health workers) who say the food boxes allow them to provide immediate help for people in crises, while giving a short breathing space in which to tackle the real problem.

For more information on the above, please select the 'Deliverables' icon on the top left hand side of this page and download Deliverable 3.