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2022-05-01-accounts

Annual Report 2021-2022

Index

introduction

-Project aim and objectives

-Pilot projects overview

Feedback and STATISTICS

Recommendations and Future plans

Author and Co-authors of this document:

Phyllis McNally BAhons Youth and Communty Work, PGcert Social Work, MSc Business and Management – Community Horizons CIO Organisational Lead and Safeguarding Officer Pantelis Chaviaras BSC Business and Management – Community Horizons CIO – Office Manager and Care bag Co-ordinator Margaret Rose McNally BA Education, TESOL Level 5 – Community Horizons CIO Trustee and Chair Professional experience: 15 years experience as TESOL teacher and EAL Co-ordinator at Stoke Damarell Community College 2 years ESOL teaching adults for Plymouth City Council Adult Education at Stoke Damarell Community College 7 years ESOL teaching at OASIS

Terminology

Forcibly displaced people (FDP) respectfully refers to asylum seekers, refugees, stateless people, resettled persons and those who migrated through family reunion (joining a family member that has received refugee status).

People of the global South / Global majority people Formerly addressed as BAME = Black, Asian and minority ethnic

Ethical Considerations

‘ With refugees in particular, ethics are concerned with research that is a positive intervention in the lives of people forcibly displaced, objectified and misrepresented, often as victims or problem (Bellinger and Ford, 2022: p.125)’

Engaging vulnerable people in research not only holds researchers to utmost ethical approaches (Bellinger and Ford, 2022) but also demands creativeness in obtaining data that otherwise would be difficult to capture. Ethical guidelines of included institutions and organisations will be adhered.

1. Introduction

Women of FDP and BAME backgrounds have different needs and face gender specific adversities for instance maternity needs (https://www.gov.uk/government/), period poverty, disproportionate caring responsibilities, less access to digital means (https://webfoundation.org) and gender based violence.

FDP BAME women are systemically disadvantaged (https://cityofsanctuary.org). More must be done to bridge gaps in service provisions and create equity in access to support, education and autonomy.

Community Horizons CIO – Who are we and what do we do?

Our core work consists of confidence and intercultural competence development in vulnerable minority women. Our steering group works together with community leaders to support the most vulnerable in practical ways. This has led to a decision to apply for funding for a two year period, after continued interest of women in the community. Through our steering group and community leaders in the wider network we know where support is required. We extend the impact and reach of active

community supporters who work to improve lives for all. Throughout 2019 until now we met regularly with community leaders and individuals to bring together engaged, passionate people that are part of positive changes.

We bring together women from diverse ethnic, professional and English proficiency backgrounds. Plymouth's population is becoming increasingly diverse. There are 43 main languages spoken citywide and nearly 100 languages spoken in Plymouth schools. Plymouth is a dispersal area for asylum seekers with around 300 people accommodated at any given time (Plymouth City Council Report 2017). This does not include Ukrainian, Syrian and Afghan refugee resettlement.

Our Aim: Confidence building through peer to peer learning, empowerment through autonomous women’s network, steered by FDP and BAME women and promote best organisational practice across Plymouth.

Our Objectives:

  1. Combating isolation by creating a community space with FDP and BAME women, from women for women.

  2. Enable confidence building through peer to peer learning and informal learning

based on intercultural citizenship and intercultural competence (ICC)

development.

  1. Supporting vulnerable women through better understanding their needs by using mapping exercises that draw out their expert knowledge of their needs and what they perceive as accessible.

  2. Recording feedback and insights by unheard voices of FDP and BAME women to promote best practice in all provisions. Through community education

unknown knowledge will be diffused, enhancing accessibility of services across Plymouth. Better Access to Education (BAE) Agenda set to assist in this.

1.2 Projects leading up to 2021 and current projects

Previous projects and ongoing projects have developed and merged as set out below: ’ Women Merging Cultures — Engagement through art and photography / women s advocacy and autonomy enhancement

-Women Merging Cultures project 1 2019-2021

-Women Merging Cultures project 2 2022

-Beneficiary trustees 2022

-Staying Safe Together (SST)

-Remaining Safe Together (RST) 2021-2022

-BAE strategy meetings links from communities and professionals to form a network 2022

-BAE meetings to for a collective re. Community Crèche 2022

Mapping out the work we have undertaken since 2019 to demonstrate why and how we are restructuring our work becomes clearer considering feedback we collated.

1.3 Projects and Funding

How they were financed Projects When

Vital Sparks, The Box and Plymouth City
Council		 WMC 1 2019
COVID-19 Government and Awards for All
National Lottery Fund		 SST 2020-2021
Awards for All National Lottery Fund RST 2021-2022
Donations WMC 2 April 2022
Jubilee Communities Funding National
Lottery		 PSR April 2022
Open Hearts Open Borders SS and BAE Oct 2022

Each funded project is culminating into a larger, focused endeavour we have termed Stepping Stones. By creating engagement to community members that would otherwise note happen with existing services and initiatives, we are able to get insights from people on why they are not accessing or taking part in what is available in Plymouth.

From 2019 onward, through community engagement projects like Women Merging Cultures, an organic process developed that brought about the understanding of what communities raised were their biggest needs. We responded to those needs which has progressed to a focus on addressing these needs in a holistic way systematically. The target group became

1.4 Project feedback and statistics

Numbers total Overview :

Office volunteers Care Care Group
FB		 WhatsApp Stepping
Hours Bags Bag Likes Group group Stones
Delivery Members Members Register

May 131 22

10

450+

26

153 78

9

44

2. Feedback

During Activities:

Our women’s group project has involved our participants in various activities including dancing, food sharing, painting and photography. Our photography sessions were the most popular ones but also where food was a part of the session. The majority of our participants attended almost all of the sessions where people brought in food and some food was also provided and a lot of their feedback reflects that it was a key reason for the session’s success and overall enjoyment. Our painting sessions had great success at also involving children letting them make their own paintings and take part in the session.

----- Start of picture text -----
WhatsApp group:
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The WhatsApp group was a great way to reach and connect people, it allowed all of the women to stay up to date with what was happening (dates, times and attendance for any of the meet ups). Additionally, the group was used to post and inform people about our other available activities that could benefit them including our English groups and any other outings.

The group was also an amazing way to not only deliver information but share pictures and thoughts about the events that took place. It was a space where women could interact freely and a lot of members had the confidence to become a part of it and join in the conversation. It offered a way to connect people who were in similar life situations. Overall, the women who joined the group were actively engaging with one another and coming to any of our activities they were able to attend and it greatly helped coordinate everything.

Numbers from June 22

People signed into the office: 382

Office hours: 131 hours of use

Volunteers signed up: 10 volunteers (8 students, 2 that are not) this does not include the number of volunteers that worked with us through Plymouth STAR unless they directly signed up as our volunteers so the overall number of individuals that have volunteered for us including through other organisations is 30

Bags given out: 252 bags out of the office during the sessions and including ones delivered is just over 300

Women group sessions: 5

Care bag handout sessions: 13

Care bag Deliveries: 26

Women Merging Cultures FB group:

Post Engagement: Average of 30 views on each post

153 group likes

78 group members

Comments:

Feedback From staff

Pantelis:

Could’ve been more on top of advertising and engaging other organizations or groups to get a stronger start. Of course this is hard as even with doing things to promote I noticed it takes people a week or two of constant reminders to actually get engaged.

Our other projects really helped drive up engagement both of people and volunteers for this project

It was extremely rare for people to show up from 3-4pm all other hours were a lot busier

A 2[nd] volunteer or staff member in the office meant we could help people carry the bags to their cars which was extremely helpful for big families as there were a lot of bags

Some of the mums that came with the bus had some trouble if they were picking up for multiple people (problem sorted since we are only doing it for whoever is there now)

There has been some confusion about what sessions are when mostly with people rather than volunteers

Organisations were really helpful in terms of getting the word out to the people involved with them which really helped promote our projects and get more people to turn up

There were very few cases where people had a hard time understanding information even when it was in English so translations and such were not needed

It was a bit hard to get volunteers to come in and sit for 4 hours with the hope some people turn up as some days it was busy with multiple big groups coming and others very quiet

Volunteer engagement on sessions that they did turn up was good but supervision and coordination was definitely needed especially for the bag packing sessions

Volunteers:

Not as exciting to volunteer for the handout sessions as it can be quiet and not a lot needs to be done (were happy to do it when we had other jobs for them to get on with such as packing bags etc)

Many female students were happy to see that our project really had women’s needs in mind and as its core and got more excited and involved about it after knowing that we were targeting mostly women.

Most of the female volunteers were very happy to see that our female hygiene bags included pads and mentioned that it must be a big relief for a lot of families

Students were interested in the concept of the project but attendance was lower during times of exams or uni holidays and also some students didn’t come again after coming to one of the not busy sessions

Some of the international student volunteers were happy to be able to practice their English during the project and excited to meet other people that spoke their language

Feedback from Organisations

Took a while to get them on board but once they started were regularly coming and taking fair amounts of bags

A lot of their community got the word going around and a fair amount of our bags has been distributed through them

They were very happy with the contents of the bags only real feedback was that we should have engaged them sooner and properly have explained it was not a one-time event but an ongoing project

Feedback from people we helped

Most people that came seemed very grateful for whatever they were given and some even surprised by how much

No complaints were made about the quantity or quality of what was included in the bags and no one needed to come get a 2[nd] bag sooner than the 1 month we set.

A few exceptions did exist of some people that came picked up their bags and run away after although this could very well be because of the language barrier or lack of confidence for a conversation

A lot of people were very interested to come again and a lot of the ladies that came were directed to us through the women’s project and other women that came and did not know about it got engaged with it

A change in behaviours of some people that got engaged in a lot of our projects, a lot of the ladies are a lot more friendly and try to have proper conversations rather than keep things short.

Most people were smiling.

People that took bags were also interested in hearing about our other projects and particularly interested in anything that would give them a chance to practice their English or anything that they could bring their children along.

3. Outcomes and Future Plans

Outcomes of project:

displacement backgrounds. Art mediums will be painting, photography and filmography.

A BIG THANK YOU TO EVERYONE INVOLVED

We thank all our volunteers, supporters, people in the community and community leaders to trust us, share their needs and challenges and support

each other throughout a very difficult stretch of time due to the global

pandemic. We also thank our trustees, staff and partners who worked though

this difficult time with us.

AND A BIG THANK YOU TO OUR FUNDERS

This project has been made possible by our funders from the National Lottery Awards For All Fund and Community Fund. Thank you to everyone who offered personal donations to us.

. A great big thank you to all our funders and donors that helped

bring this project to life and have enabled us to continue our work despite challenging times. We would not have been able to support so many people

without you.

Trustee board

Treasurer since 2013 Margaret McNally
Chair since 2018 Lilly Sartison
New trustee in 2022 Tereza Vranova
New trustee in 2022 Eryk K. Ostrowski
New trustee in 2022 Daisy Birkenhead

02.02.2023

Community Horizons CIO

Annual Accounts 21.05.2021-21.05.2022 Payments and Receipts

£13,628.74 Balanced carried forward form financial year 2019/2022

£22,543.00 TOTAL INCOME £16,820.92 TOTAL EXPENDITURE £19,350.82 TOTAL INCOME BALANCE

Surplus £18,650.82 Free reserves £670

Grants and donations we received in financialyear 2021-2022
TNL Awards for All / COVID—19 for ‘Remaining Safe Together’ £10,000
TNL Sharing Roots £12,363
Donations £180
TOTAL £22,543
How we spent funding in in the financialyear 2021-2022
Staff wages £6,913.27
Insurance £300
Volunteer expenses and hardship fund £4,443.07
Project costs £5,164.58
Equipment £0
TOTAL £16,820.92

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- Time volunteered 244h Equivalent to expenditure of: £4655.56

Please note: in accordance with charity regulations this payment and receipts is not externally audited due to the annual income not exceeding the threshold of £25,000.

‘Only charities with a gross income of more than £25,000 in their financial year are required to have their accounts independently examined’

(http://www.slsgb.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/CIO-Accounting.pdf).

Authorised by (role) Name Signature Date
Organisational Lead Phyllis McNally 02.02.2023
Office Manager Panteleimon Chaviaras 27.02.2023

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