Meet our new Community Impact Manager
Good Growth Hub graduate Haile Tekla Jones joins the CDT
It’s an exciting time for Hackney Wick & Fish Island Community Development Trust, with the ongoing success of our circular economy hub The Loop, new site projects in the works such our HUSK designed workspaces, plus the recently announced partnership with Hackney Wick Town Hall.
To help us realise the full potential of these opportunities, we’re delighted to announce the appointment of Haile Tekla Jones in the role of our first dedicated Community Impact Manager.
Haile’s focus will be to ensure that the CDT’s community ownership initiatives genuinely benefit and engage with all local people, something that can’t be assumed just happens in an area with the sheer diversity of backgrounds and lived experiences found around here.
“I've been a beneficiary of a number of charities in East London,” Haile tells us, “so I’ve seen the impact they've had on me, and know first-hand how they can help you grow an understanding of all the meaningful ways to contribute back to your own local community.”
With a background in freelance photography (he recently won the A Day in Your Life Awards competition 2025 for his work rooted in social realism) and documentary-making (previously working with Four Corners in Bethnal Green), Haile has also been part of the cohort at Social Ark, a charity that works with young people in the borough who have an interest in social entrepreneurship to launch their own businesses, and worked closely with Foundation for Future London and other partners in East London's growth and ecosystem.
He has been inspired by the number of organisations currently undertaking this kind of work in the area, from the visionaries at BADU through to his mentors at The Good Growth Hub. “They’re a particularly passionate and inspired group of young people,” he says, “whose programmes support all kinds of creativity and community action. Now, in my new role with the HWFI CDT, I feel empowered to do my own bit in inspiring others to be agents for change in their communities.”
Haile was also involved in 2022’s Warm Shores artwork; the two, instantly iconic oversized statues that stand outside Hackney Town Hall in honour of the boroughs many Windrush era residents. A descendant of windrush gen migrants from Jamaica, his face was among the 30 or so models from which the statues were hewn by artist Thomas Price, and he helped with the delivery of the project, too.
Warm Shores sculptures at Hackney Town Hall
“It’s been amazing time to live around here,” he says, “especially seeing how much this area has developed in the years since the Olympics. I was just finishing school when the Games happened, so I have seen things change so dramatically. The word ‘gentrification’ gets thrown around a lot, but I do think that the experience here in Hackney is almost like a landmark in that process, and in how rapidly we’ve therefore also seen the rise in property prices and people being displaced. In all my work there’s always a strong interest in how culture and arts, community impact and fundraising can come together and help combat some of the economic equality of such rapid regeneration and to help these areas retain their cultural character. I’m also learning a lot more about how sustainability and the circular economy is increasingly linked to community impact, too (identified in UN SDG 11, sustainable cities), something we’re going to be working on a lot in the months ahead.”
Haile will be working on various initiatives in 2025 including the relaunch of Hackney Wick Town Hall.
He’ll also be writing a regular series of short thought pieces and articles on sustainability and how it can contribute to a better community for us all.