Jonathan Ridge, the Proprietor of ‘Helpinhand’, has lived in the West End of Glasgow for fourteen years. For the last twenty-five years, he has worked as a manager for local and international library bookselling companies having been a major shareholder and director of his own business. Through his work he has become well known within local authorities throughout Scotland and the UK as a reliable and ‘to be trusted’ person with whom to do business.

Jonathan is closely involved in voluntary community work in the West End of Glasgow and throughout the City. Previously he was active in the Strathbungo Conservation Society, on the South-side of Glasgow. More recently, he became a founder member and secretary/treasurer of the Athole Lane Improvement Society, (ALIS), taking responsibility for its constitution and increasing membership to over sixty West End residents within three months. Through his work, Jonathan has received support and encouragement from officers of organisations such as The Friends of Glasgow West, Kelvinside Community Council, Glasgow City Council and from the elected members of Hillhead Ward as well as officials from other West End local community groups and organisations.

Also, Jonathan is Convenor of GoBike, the Strathclyde Cycle Campaign; he volunteers as a support worker with outpatients of Gartnavel Hospital; for a short time he worked as a volunteer with Insight Radio, the radio station of the RNIB, as a reader of talking newspapers; he loves reading, particularly aloud to anyone who will listen!

For many years, Jonathan maintained his own smallholding and was the owner and carer for his own livestock, including goats, chickens, dogs and cats. Since his teenage years he has been a keen gardener and maintains his own, locally admired, garden in Dowanhill, planning and developing this from an overgrown weed patch (see picture to the right).

Through Jonathan’s involvement in his neighbourhood environmental society and the maintenance of his own garden space, friends and neighbours have regularly asked for his advice and assistance in their own homes and gardens. Currently, he helps with neighbours’ pets, assists elderly residents with heavy duty work in their homes and assists in the maintenance and planting of their own gardens.