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2024-08-15-accounts

Women's Voice

Annual Accounts

for the period

1 September 2023 - 31 August 2024

Contents:

Organisational information Trustees Annual Report Receipts & Payments account Statement of Assets & Liabilities

Notes Independent Examiners report

Hastings Voluntary Action Jackson Hall Portland Place Hastings East Sussex TN34 IQN

Name of charity & Trustees: Number:

Legal form:

Goveming document:

Bankers:

Address:

Independent Examiner:

Govemance & Management

Aims & Objectives TN34 3BJ Organisatio Ann Kramer nal Ronan Drennan information Carol Hughes for Gill Knight Louise Carlyle Women's Voice for HSBC, Hastings Branch the year Laura Dawson, Independent Examiner ended 31 HVA, Jackson Hall, Portland Place, Hastings, TN34 August IQN 2024 The Charity is operated under the rules of its constitution and registered with the Charity Women's Voice Commission as a CIO on the 27th May 2016. 1167373 The Charity is managed by a board of trustees which is responsible for the organisatjons strategic direction. Charitable Incorporated The methods adopted for the recruitment and Organisatjon (CIO) - appointment of new trustees is laid down in the Association Model consititution. Trustees are appointed for a three year period, and retire by rotation. Trustees are recruited in a variety of ways:advertising, networking, personal C/0 201 Priory Road invitaüon. All trustees undergo an induction into the H organisation. To be a trustee Women's Voice recruits a women who agree to commit to our aims and s objectives. t i The Trustees hold monthly planning meetings to organise n its day-today operation. Meetings are atended by the trustees with the development consulEnt and finance g oficer in attendance. s E The object of the CIO is to promote any charitable a purpose for the benefit of women in particular the s advancement of women's health and wellbeing and the t promotion of equality and diversity of wornen resident in Hastings and surrounding areas by preserving and S protecting their physical and emotional healtl and u wellbeing, advancing their socail inclusion. Facilitaüng their access to information which supports and relieves s their need and advances their education with the object s of improving the lives of said women. e x

Women's Voice

The Chair's Annual Report

for the period

01 September 2023

to 31 August 2024

Chair's report sept 2023 -Aug 2024

Hear Me Roar... More

We held the 2024 International Women's Day festival at the Observer Building attracting over 500 attendees. We had a packed programme of talks, creative and wellbeing workshops, poetry and music and were joined by fifteen local organisations. This event is continuing to grow and we aim to hold it at the 0B again in 2025. We have already secured a speaker and booked the venue.

We gathered feedback after the event and people described the event as welcoming, empowering, inclusive and inspiring with over 50% saying the poetry was the most memorable part particularly AFLO We are aware there are timitations to the venue but there are few other accessible spaces that have the multifunction we need at a reasonable price.

Women's Voices

We had two further Women's Voices session. One to coincide with our AGM on Thursday 1 February in collaboration with Storytime. It was a great session attended by over fifty people. We heard from Lily, Lily and Nuno and afterwards everyone was invited to take part writing and sharing their own words.

Secondly Women's Voices Why Is Palestine A Feminist Issue was a collaboration with Hastings and District Palestine Solidarity Campaign and Palestine led educational organisation MAKAN. We held the event at The Stade on 31 July with food provided by Chef Roa Almadi. It was a great event with over 50 people attending, the food was delicious and the talk/workshop was really interesting.

Although the event costs for this were very high including hire of The Stade, fee and food costs for Roa, fee and travel for MAKAN we covered our costs with the ticket sales. We loved this format of a talk/workshop so plan to do more like this in the coming year. We have one planned with WEN and are hoping this will be our AGM event.

Making It Happen

We were successful in our bid to the Making It Happen Grow Grant in April, our application was for a piece of research and development work which included; dropping in at existing community spaces in the town centre and Hollington to find out what the main issues are facing women locally; putting on events/workshops to address them; rebranding the organisation; redoing the website and researching the possibility of a women's centre locally. As part of the funding we are also working on our governance and undertaking training in a number of areas.

We have successfully rebranded the organisation workingwith Pebble Media, Erica Smith and canvassing the opinion of members. The website

is nearly finished, with a plan to launch at the AGM. As well as information about our events this will also feature a brand new database of organisations supporting women, girls and LGBTQIA+ people across the region,

We are over half way through our outreach work having had successful drop ins in the

Town Centre and Hollington. We have brought together a series of events called Let's Talk About It based on the main issues women identified during the drop ins. These include neurodiversity, violence against women and girls, women's health, voicelessness and sexism/mjsogyny.

The Neurodiversity in Women event was well attended and there was a lot of appetite for further support with this group. We have since hosted another event called What Do Neurodivergent Women Need? and plan to continue this work.

The Violence Against Women and Girls: Let's Talk About It session was attended by local services Beyond Harm, CGL, East Sussex VAWG team, East Sussex Refuge Service, Oasis and Survivors' Network. We were given extra funding from Safer Hastings Partnership to pay for the venue, provide lunch for attendees and create printed publicity to advertise the event. It was a great opportunity for services to meet each other and women from the community with lived experience to share their experiences. It was a moving day which addressed big questions about why VAWG is still so prevalent and what we can do to change it.

We organised this event as part of our Making It Happen work however we were invited by Safer Hastings Partnership to take part in a multi service planning meeting for White Ribbon Day events across the county. We have agreed to work with them and Mr Hastings and Mr St Leonards on an on-going basis in 2025 to see if we can have meaningful engagement with the men's groups in town.

We will be writing the report for this project at the end of February 2025 and aim to find further funding to continue some of the work which we've started.

Young Person's Project

With support from Sussex Community Foundation we have started working with a group of 14 young people from East Sussex college in Hastings to co-create a set of creative resources on issues such as sexual violence, domestic abuse, on-line sexualisation and grooming, sexism and misogyny etc. Artist facilitator Toya Walker is leading the group through a series of creative workshops to explore ideas and develop them into a product which can be used by their peers and other schools, colleges and organisations to support conversations on these issues.

We partnered with Beyond Harm, a local domestic violence prevention project to do an initial workshop for the project. 24 young women, trans and non-binary people attended and discussed issues around consent/boundaries, peer pressure, healthy relationships, coercive control/ domestic abuse, sexual abuse and harassment, pornography, online safety, sexualisation, grooming, stereotyping and misogyny. They were asked to think about how these issues affect young people now, what they would like to see change in the future, and how helpful the resources we shared with them were for prompting conversation.

The final resources will be used by Beyond Harm in further workshops with young people and we will promote them to all the local schools and colleges and display the work at our WD festival in March.

Community Stalls

We had stalls at Art in the Park Easter fun day, Hastings Community Network (talk),

Palestine March, Broomgrove Community Centre Family Day, Sanctuary Festival, Trans Pride, Freshers Fayre and White Ribbon Day at East Sussex college. We also took part in Janey Moffat's project All Us Women supporting a drop in workshop at Afri Co Lab and promoting her exhibition at DLWP.

Governance and training

We worked with Claire Ross, who did an audit of our operation. She spoke to all existing trustees and committee members about their thoughts on the organisation and showed us where we could work to improve our structure and systems. She also did a training session for us on governance.

Our committee and trustees undertook Trans, Non-Binary and Intersex Community Awareness Training with Trans Pride. We offered spare places to other community organisations which were very popular. We will aim to have some further equality, diversity and inclusion training and group facilitation training in 2025.

We had a great away day and have another planned for January to include some training. These are great opportunities for us to dream and have practical conversations about how we want to move forward as an organisation. This year has seen our profile grow even further within the town and the more visible we are, the more there is to be part of and do. We have set up working groups to see if we can spread the workload between more people.

We have two new trustees and aim for more members of our committee to become trustees at this AGM. We are aware that we lack diversity in our committee and are aiming to address this in the coming year.

Development work, fundraising and networking

We are currently in the process of fundraising for IWD 2025 and planning a larger application to the National Lottery focusing on what women have been feeding back to us this year.

We have attended a number of women(s health events are discussing the Women's Health Strategy and Women's Health Hubs with Dr Anna Merla Public Health East Sussex. This work will inform the Women's Health event we hold in the New Year.

Women's Voice

Receipts & Payment accoun&

for the period 01 September 2023 to 31 August 2024

All Wnds are unres&icted

Receipts
Donations
~~Evenb~~
Grants - Chalk Cliff Trust
Grants - Sussex Community Small Sparks
Grant - Making it Happen Grow Grant
Grant - Sussex community Fund Grant
Collections
Sundries
Bank Interest
TOTALRECEIPTS
Expenditure
Advertising/Promotional
Computer Costs
Design
Insurances
Ofice/General Admin Exps
Printing, Postage and Stationary
Venue Hire
Volunteer Expenses
Workshops
Food
Instructor
MiH Project Work
Social Media
Speakers/FaciliEtors
Bank Charges
Accounts
MisclSundry
TOTAL PAYMENTS
Net
Fund balances b/f		 15,589.20
4476.31
2024
2023
757.21
872.86
811.66
27.65
3,000.00
3,750.00
500.00
~~13,500.00~~
412.40
19,391.38
4,400.51
93.75
58.80
189.19
598.50
590.68
353.50
1 ,082.45
660.00
190.69
102.00
36.90
403.39
4,759.26
60.80
326.60
272.19
8,278 49
2,283.33
11,112.89
2,117.18
4,476.31
2,359.13
Women's Voice Women's Voice
Sutement of Assets &
Liabilities
as at
31 August 2024
2024 2023
Current assets
Current Account 31/08/24 15,566.10 4,398.21
Cash in hand 31/08/24 23.10 28.10
Debtors 50.00
15,589.20 4,476.31
less Current
Uncashed cheques
15,589.20 4,476.31
Represented by:
Accumulated Fund blf 4,476.31 2,359.13
Surplus/deficit of receipts over paynEnG 11,112.89 2,117.18
15,589.20 4476.31

Charity Law requires the Trustees to prepare financial statements for each financial year which comply with the regulations set out in the Charities Act 1993. The tustess have elected to take advantage of the provisions that apply to small chariües and have prepared a Receipts and Payrnents account and Statement of Assets and Ljabilities-

Approved by the Trustees on

OG— O a— and signed on their

behalf by

Louise Carlyle

Ronan Drennan

Independent Examiner's Report to the Committee of Women's Voice

I report on the accounts of Women's Voice for the Ouelve month period ended 31 August 2024 which are set out on the previous pages.

Respective responsibilities of committee & examiner

The charity's trustees are responsible for the preparation of the accounts, The charity's trustees consider that an audit is not required for this year under section 144 of the Charities Act 2011 (the Charities Act), and that an independent examination is needed.

It is my responsibility:

to examine the accounts under section 145 of the Charities Act to follow the procedures laid down in the General Directions given by the Charity Commission (under section 145(5)(b) of the Charities Act), and to state whether particular have come to my attention

Basis of independent examiners report

My examination was carried out in accordance with the General Directions given by the Charity Commission. An examination includes a review of the accounting records kept by the charity and a comparison of the supporting documentation presented with those records. It also includes consideration of any unusual items or disclosures in the accoune, and seeking explanations from the tusees conceming any such nutters. The procedures undertaken do not provide all the evidence that would be required in an audit, and consequently no opinion is given as to whether the accounts present a "true and fair' view and the report is limited to those matters set out in the statement below.

Independent examiners statement

In connection with ny examination, no n•ptter has come to my attention:

L Dawson

Finance Managera Hastings Voluntary Action Jackson Hall, Portland Place, Hastings, TN34 IQN

Dated: