Training is under way for Covid Community Champions to ensure key health messages are provided about the pandemic.

The champions have also prepared videos to highlight the importance of surge testing and vaccine availability.

Covid Community Champions are people from all areas of Blackburn with Darwen, from different cultural backgrounds and across age groups who all want to make a difference in their neighbourhoods and help local communities recover from the damaging impacts of the coronavirus pandemic. 

Organisations including Spring North, the IMO Charity, Lancashire Council of Mosques, One Voice Blackburn, Blackburn YMCA and Youth Action are partners in the Covid Community Champions project, working specifically with people from BAME backgrounds. 

BAME residents are one group that has been disproportionately affected by the long-term impact of the pandemic. 

Each organisation has recruited champions from throughout the borough. 

The training, conducted by IMO, started in the middle of last month, with the aim of passing key messages into the community, as well as gathering feedback from the local community to shape potential campaigns.

The partnership has already created a number of videos highlighting the importance of surge testing, and the availability of extra vaccines for those eligible, as there has been a rise in infections locally.

Organisations are working with Blackburn with Darwen Council to establish a local network of Covid Community Champions – volunteers who can help keep their friends, family, neighbours, colleagues and networks up to date, by sharing the latest public health information from the council and local NHS.

Sayyed Osman, the council’s strategic director for adults and health, said: “Our Covid Community Champions have a vital role to play in helping us get back to some kind of normality safely and while keeping control of virus rates across the borough.”