2023-03-31-accounts - Embraceability

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EMBRACEABILITY ANNUAL RETURN 202212023

TRUSTEES ANNUAL REPORT April 2022 - March 2023

Charity Name: EmbraceAbility

Registered Charity Number: 1173877

ADDRESS OF PRINCIPAL OFFICE

30A York Place Brighton East Sussex United Kingdom BN1 4GU

REFERENCE, AND ADMINISTRATIVE DETAILS OF THE CHARITY, ITS TRUSTEES AND ADVISERS

EMBRACEABILITY DIRECTORATE

Lea Jean Roberts: Chair of Trustees (stepped down April 2023) Kwai Chi: Trustee Klaudia Kranc: Treasurer Gwenith Chimwaza: Trustee

Jodie Le Marrec: Director

STATEMENT FROM THE FOUNDER

In 2022, we celebrated the 5th anniversary of EmbraceAbility. The team welcomed a period of reflection and expansion to Malawi, reaching over 1000 disabled households. We also took the opportunity to evaluate our vision, mission and values as an organisation.

We recognise that inclusion accelerates the economy, society and communities. Our approach is simple: we listen and work with people with disabilities to build inclusive communities. Through listening, we empower people with disabilities to lead change, working towards a world where people with disabilities are included without bias and discrimination.

Our strategic aim is to transition from founder-led to scaling and sustaining the team. We have exciting plans to formalise our Disability Training programme, and we invite you to invest in our innovative training programme and help us achieve an inclusive and equitable future.

We thank our donors and supporters for their long-term support and dedication to EmbraceAbility. Without support from the community, trusts, and foundations, we would be unable to deliver our work.

We are looking forward to the year ahead and our new projects.

On behalf of the EmbraceAbility team, we hope you will enjoy reading about our successes and what we hope to deliver in the future.

Many thanks,

Jodie Le Marrec

BOARD OF TRUSTEES

The Board of Trustees

Structure, Governance and Management

EmbraceAbility’s structure is that of a Charitable Incorporated Organisation (CIO). Its governing document is a ‘foundation’ model constitution, in which EmbraceAbility’s only voting members are its trustees.

EmbraceAbility is run by a Board of Trustees who manage the charitable objectives, strategic direction, and affairs of the organisation. EmbraceAbility’s Directors are responsible for running its day-to-day operations.

All EmbraceAbility staff, trustees and volunteers are subject to EmbraceAbility’s hiring policy. EmbraceAbility believes that hiring qualified individuals to fill positions at the charity contributes to the overall strategic success of EmbraceAbility. Each trustee is recruited for their specific skill set, in order that they can make significant and targeted contributions to EmbraceAbility.

Every trustee is subject to an interview process, reference checks and criminal record checks (DBS checks) to ensure good governance. Trustees are invited to EmbraceAbility induction training to cover procedures and policy which is essential for the fulfilment of their functions and duties. Each trustee has a designated role within the organisation to ensure EmbraceAbility is able to perform its objectives and activities effectively.

EXECUTIVE BOARD

Jodie Le Marrec, Director

The Director is responsible for the day-to-day operations, managing partners in Cambodia and Malawi, fundraising, developing and implementing strategy and programme budgets in collaboration with the Trustees.

The Director works closely with the Chair of Trustees and serves as a member of the Board of Directors. This position’s primary responsibility is ensuring organisational effectiveness by providing leadership for the organisation's financial and operational functions.

Working on project management, this position also contributes to developing and implementing organisational strategies, policies and practices.

Our Approach and Values

As an organisation, we reflected on what drives us and revised our vision, mission and values. We hope in the next 3 years to move towards a model of co-production where people with disabilities are involved at every stage of the programme design, delivery and evaluation.

Being led by the people we serve is vital if we provide inclusive services. This year we will formalise steering committees in Cambodia and Malawi to give us feedback on our programmes and ensure that we provide the best services possible.

EMBRACEABILITY’S PRIMARY AIMS 2022-2023

CAMBODIA

We are honoured to deliver our programmes in partnership with Gender and Development in Cambodia, who have been working in Cambodia since 1997 to improve the livelihoods of women and girls across the country.

1) Project Management - Community Outreach: provide accessible healthcare to children with disabilities and support carers with mental health support.

2) Preventing Violence Against Women and Girls with Disabilities: providing 345 women and girls with disabilities with weekly self-help group sessions focussing on advocacy training.

3) Disability Training: we have delivered two intensive 10-day training sessions to over 30 staff at GADC. This is part of our pilot Disability Training programme, where we aim to give organisations the knowledge and confidence to improve the inclusion and accessibility of programmes.

MALAWI

1) Emergency Relief: we provided over 1000 disabled households with food, cholera packs, water buckets, hygiene packs and materials to repair their roofs in response to Cyclone Ana and Cyclone Freddy.

2) Inclusive Education: ensuring every child with disabilities has access to education and teacher training for school teachers.

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5) Research: EmbraceAbility is invested in providing sustainable projects with demonstrable impact. Our organisation ensures all projects are well-researched, monitored and evaluated through a mixed methodology of participatory qualitative and quantitative research methods.

6) Campaigns: EmbraceAbility runs campaigns via different media outlets to raise awareness of disability and development in Cambodia to promote social inclusion.

7) Fundraising: We aim to raise enough funds to sustain our active programmes and our key research initiatives.

ACHIEVEMENTS AND PERFORMANCES

people in poverty supported through our Emergency Relief 16 Project 35 staff trained in Disability 3 Awareness and Inclusion Training

disabled children integrated into mainstream schooling.

1000

launched three new projects across Cambodia and Malawi.

ACTIVE PROGRAMMES IN CAMBODIA

This year, we partnered with Gender and Development in Cambodia (GADC) and expanded our programmes to Malawi.

We started to scale down our previous programmes and implement our new strategy focusing more on inclusive development. Our new approach means we can work with organisations already delivering fantastic programmes and ensure all organisations have the skills, knowledge, and training to deliver inclusive programmes.

Community Outreach

Our flagship programme now has a different approach, with service users being offered healthcare alongside community interventions. We work with existing service providers to provide healthcare to children with disabilities and mental health support to carers.

Preventing Violence Against Women and Girls with Disabilities

Providing 345 women and girls with disabilities with weekly self-help group sessions focussing on advocacy training in the three poorest provinces in Cambodia. We are also providing funding for women with disabilities to run a campaign on the 16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence in November.

Disability Training

EmbraceAbility has been trialling a new training programme where we have been running 10-day-intensive training courses for staff at GADC in Disability Awareness and Inclusion training, Disability Budgeting and Disability Safeguarding.

The aim is to run more training for international development charities across Cambodia and Malawi to ensure core programmes are inclusive and accessible.

ACTIVE PROGRAMMES IN MALAWI

EmbraceAbility is excited to announce that we will expand projects to Phalombe, Malawi. In November 2022, we visited Malawi to undertake research and provide emergency relief for disabled households.

Malawi is one of the poorest countries in the world. Over 85% of disabled households live in extreme poverty. Malawi is battling an economic crisis that has led to fuel shortages and inflated food prices. The economy is heavily dependent on agriculture and vulnerable to external shocks, particularly climatic shocks.

EmbraceAbility is working in Phalombe, an area which has faced an ongoing humanitarian crisis, Tropical Storm Ana (January 2022), Cyclone Gome (March 2022) and Cyclone Freddy (2023), which have caused severe food shortages, a cholera epidemic and displacement of households. Many families have reported a 60% decline in crop production and are surviving on mangos growing from the trees, with many still destitute from Cyclone Freddy (2023).

Emergency Disaster Relief

In 2022, we provided 660 people with safe drinking water, food, and temporary shelter responding to Tropical Storm Ana. In 2023, Cyclone Freddy caused devastation and destruction, we were the first responders to provide access to safe drinking water, food and hygiene materials to 1000 disabled households across 13 villages in Phalombe.

Inclusive Education

This year, we have provided 19 children with disabilities access to education in Malawi and hope to run our first-ever teacher training programme this summer.

FUNDRAISING

EmbraceAbility successfully fundraised £18,850.70 through the fundraising efforts of the EmbraceAbility Fundraising Team. There was a slight drop in income due to staff shortages and illness.

EmbraceAbility receives voluntary donations from the public, grants and in its fundraising activities, the organisation adheres to the Charity Commission and Institute of Fundraising’s guidelines and best practice. The organisation has received no fundraising complaints and we protect people’s privacy through our data protection policy.

Campaigns

EmbraceAbility successfully raised the profile of international development issues relevant to disability and social inclusion in Cambodia across a broad readership. EmbraceAbility effectively disseminated social media campaigns, articles and blog posts with increasing reach and engagements. Analysis of our online activity shows a marked and continued increase in the numbers of people and organisations engaging with our online campaign materials.

RISK MANAGEMENT

The processes for identifying, evaluating and managing the significant risks faced by EmbraceAbility are ongoing, the Board of Trustees and the Director regularly review the financial accounts. The elements of the control framework, incorporating the key sources of evidence utilised by the Board in reviewing the effectiveness of the system of internal control, include:

a comprehensive risk management framework which identifies key risks to the charity on a regular basis and seeks to mitigate and monitor the risks and the associated mitigation; - an organisational structure with clearly defined lines of responsibility and delegation of authority set out in the organisation’s financial regulations;
a code of ethics supported by a framework of policies and procedures which volunteers and trustees must adhere to;
the monitoring of action plans and reviewing recommendations made by the Board;
approval of the annual budget and budget outlined by the Board.

The Board is aware of and committed to ensuring EmbraceAbility is compliant with the new General Data Protection Regulations. Compliance with GDPR is closely monitored by EmbraceAbility’s Data Protection Officer.

The Board’s review of the effectiveness of the organisation’s system of internal control has identified no significant failings, weaknesses or instances of fraudulent activity which have resulted in material misstatement or loss that require disclosure within the financial statements for the year ended 31st March 2023, and is up to the date of signing these financial statements.

PRINCIPAL RISKS AND UNCERTAINTY

EmbraceAbility has a well-established process for the identification and management of risk. The organisation has identified a range of risks and uncertainties, the principal ones being:

the sudden loss of funding from major donors;
-staff shortages which impacts operations and fundraising capacity.
and,the lack of grants for disability care projects.

EmbraceAbility’s Board of Trustees and Directors have identified the main financial risks to the organisation to be:

failure to meet financial targets;
failure to achieve profitable growth and achieve our fundraising targets;
failure to meet the operational requirements of the organisation.

After a risk assessment of the organisation's financial position and resources, together with a review of the budget for 2022/2023 and financial forecasts, the Board believes that the organisation is well placed to manage its business risks. The Board, therefore, has a reasonable expectation that the organisation will have adequate resources to continue operating for the foreseeable future and thus continues to adopt the going concern basis of accounting in preparing the annual financial statements.

VOLUNTEERS

All volunteers are subject to EmbraceAbility’s strict recruitment policies and protocols. All volunteers that work directly with children must have an up-to-date criminal record check. All volunteers must submit a CV and cover letter, and they must interview with the Chair of Trustees prior to their selection.

FINANCIAL REVIEW

The summary financial information on these pages contains data from the management account of EmbraceAbility for the year ended 31st March 2023 and provides an overview of the income and expenditure for the year.

Income: £18,850.70 Expenditure: £13,599.51

Financial Activities Statement

REVIEW OF EXPENDITURE

The EmbraceAbility Board of Trustees is committed to the services delivered to all its beneficiaries. Therefore, the Board is committed to monitoring its financial obligations to meet its charitable activities.

We are pleased to report that £13,599.19 of £18,850.70, 58% of our income, was spent on our charitable activities and the furthering of our charitable objectives.

Method of Transfer

EmbraceAbility banks with Triodos, one of the world’s leading sustainable banks whose focus is positive social, environmental and cultural change.

All EmbraceAbility expenditure in Cambodia and Malawi has been run through EmbraceAbility and GADC financial systems and protocols. This involves sending budgeted quarterly project costs from our Triodos account to a designated organisation bank account prior to the beginning of each financial quarter, and withdrawing the necessary funds as required in the country.

PLANS FOR THE FUTURE

Accessible Compostable Toilets

EmbraceAbility successfully raised money to launch the pilot programme to build 6 accessible compostable toilets across two villages. This will help reduce the spread of diseases and support access to safe water for the community, and the community can use the fertiliser for the land, which will benefit the environment and increase food production.

Disability Support Cash Transfer Programme

Monthly cash transfer for disability support for 86 disabled households to help them live out of poverty for families living in Malawi.

Mobile Community Healthcare Programme

Launching in 2025, we are fundraising for a mobile healthcare van offering check-ups and occupational and physiotherapy to disabled children and their families.