2025-03-31-accounts - Una Gan A Guna - Irish Women's Oral History Collective

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Registered charity 1199074

Annual Report April 2024 - March 2025

Achievements, Challenges and Looking Ahead

HIGHLIGHTS OF 2024-2025

Ó GHLÚIN GO GLÚIN’ (FROM KNEE TO KNEE)

We were thrilled to receive our first small grant from the Irish Emigrant Support Programme Small Grants Scheme. The scheme provides funding to registered charities, charitable bodies or voluntary/not-for-profit organisations that strengthen links with and support Irish communities overseas and encourages closer links between these communities and Ireland so we were a great fit as creating community closeness is central to what we do. The grant was awarded for the period July 2024 to June 2025 and enabled us to have a specific focus on training and supporting younger oral history interviewers to record the life stories of older Irish or diaspora Irish women.

We called the project ‘Ó Ghlúin Go Glúin’ (From Knee to Knee) and it enabled us to to train a younger generation of Irish women in oral history interviewing and give them access to the wisdom and experience of their elders. This project developed the younger volunteers’ skills, confidence and employability and included interviewers of Irish birth or descent under the age of 30 across Ireland, the U.K. and Australia. The intergenerational nature of the project allowed these volunteers to connect to their

Irish elders. It has allowed them to understand the commonalities and differences in their experiences as women of different generations but with shared connections to Ireland, and to find community and connection with women beyond their existing networks. To learn a new skill, develop strong listening and communication skills, understand the ethical complexities of oral history interviewing, fulfil their duties of care and gain opportunities for personal and professional development.

The grant also enabled us to pay for a small amount of project management/ coordination for a number of months. We recruited three volunteer regional coordinators.10 volunteer interviewers between the ages of eighteen and thirty were recruited and trained in oral history interviewing (over the full year of the grant). The women interviewed within this financial year are included in the section below.

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TRAINING AND PEER SUPPORT FOR OUR VOLUNTEERS

We continued to provide regular online peer support for our volunteers. Some example topics from this period were Recruiting New Interviewees, Social Media Skills (Delivered by ‘Irish With Mollie’), Navigating Distress or Trauma Within the Interview, Interviewing Family and Friends.

THE INTERVIEWS

Eleven oral histories were recorded by our volunteer interviewers during the period 1 April 2024 – 31 March 2025, eight of which were intergenerational (the interviewer was under thirty years old, the narrator was over fifty). These were warm conversations between women with connections to Ireland, focusing on their experiences between the ages of fifteen and 25. The collection and preservation of these interviews enriches and deepens the historical record of women’s experiences in Ireland during the twentieth century, which was obviously a period of huge change and great complexity. This contributes to a greater understanding, both now and into the future, of the twentieth century and the societal shifts that took place in the period across a huge array of themes including childhood, education, work, family, and personal relationships reflecting also shifting attitudes to class, race, religion and gender in modern Ireland.

These records are not only immensely valuable to historians, they are also really valuable to the interviewees themselves who tell us that they find the opportunity to reflect on their early life to be an emotionally engaging and rewarding experience. Additionally, the collection of these interviews provide the friends and family of those interviewed an opportunity to understand the interviewee in a new way and the peace of mind of knowing that family stories are being recorded and preserved for posterity. Other women of Irish descent also report feelings of pride in Irish women’s achievements alongside a sense of relief that women’s stories are being told and preserved, including sensitive histories of topics that are only recently able to be spoken about within Ireland.

Each oral history may be recorded in one or more session, in person or online. The interviews are transcribed by volunteers, and the transcripts and audio are provided to every woman interviewed so that they can have a chance to read and appreciate what they have said and make informed choices about whether and how they want to deposit their life history in the archive. We maintained regular contact with all our interviewees over the period taken to deposit their interview and discussion any implications in relation to matters such as their own privacy and that of others and any safeguarding concerns in relation to the recordings and transcripts.

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GROWING OUR SMALL CHARITY

Over this period, Úna Gan a Gúna has been able to update and improve our systems to increase our efficiency and potential to work at a greater scale. For example, we introduced the regional coordinator roles to support the administration of volunteers by region, spreading the load of one of the most time-intensive elements of the project among a wider field of people and making the organisation more sustainable and able to provide closer support to volunteers. We have also standardised our recruitment and induction processes to ensure that all volunteers complete the same process in the same order despite us de-centralising the induction and training process.

CHALLENGES

This was an exciting period in which we encountered significant challenges in relation to sustaining the viability of the charity in a very difficult financial climate. The small grant from the Irish Emigrant Support Programme helped us tremendously. We did not have capacity for fundraising more widely. A small number of dedicated volunteers contributed many hours of unpaid work to enable us to deliver on our goals therefore capacity building is a priority for 2025-2026.

Signed by Evelyn Kerrigan ……………

Chair of Trustees[1]

Date………23[rd] January 2026……………………………………………………………

1 A full list of our trustees is available on the Charity Commission website

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Charity Name			No (if any)
Úna Gan a Gúna			1199074
Receipts and payments accounts
	Period start		Period end
For the period from	date Apr-24	To	date Mar-25

CC16a

Section A Receipts and payments

	Unrestricte d funds	Unrestricte d funds	Restricte d funds	Endowment funds	Total funds	Last year
		to the	to the	to the	to the	to the
	nearest £		nearest £	nearest £	nearest £	nearest £
A1 Receipts
Receipts from donors		720	-	-	720	720
Charity activities		225	-	-	225	225
Grants		4,000	-	-	4,000	-
Gift Aid		6	-	-	6	-
		-	-	-	-	-
*Sub total*(Gross income for AR)		4,726	-	-	4,726	945

A2 Asset and
investment sales,
(see table).
		-	-	-	-	-
*Sub total*		-	-	-	-	-



*Total receipts*		4,726	-	-	4,726	945

A3 Payments
Website hosting		425	-	-	425	411
Advertising/Printing		73	-	-	73	40
Recordingsoftware		168	-	-	168	115
Recordingequipment		265	-	-	265	112
Courier services		-	-	-	-	33
Mobilephone services		42	-	-	42	16
Training		115	-	-	115	-
Project OGGGG staffing cost		1,000	-	-	1,000	-
Trustee expenses		62	-	-	62	-


*Sub total*		2,180	-	-	2.180	753

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A4 Asset and
investment purchases,
(see table)
		-	-	-	-
*Sub total*		-	-	-	-	-




*Total payments*		2,180	-	-	2,180	753



	*Net of*
*receipts/(payments* )		2,546	-	-	2,546	192
A5 Transfers	between	-	-	-	-	-
funds
A6 Cash funds last year end		339	-	-	339	147
*Cash funds this* *year end*		2,885	-	-	2,885	339

Section B Statement of assets and liabilities at the end of the period

----- Start of picture text -----
Unrestricte Restricte Endowmen
d funds d funds t funds
Categories Details
to nearest £ to nearest to nearest £
£
B1 Cash funds - - -
- - -
Total cash funds - - -
(agree balances with receipts and
payments account(s)) OK OK OK
Unrestricte Restricte Endowmen
d funds d funds t funds
to nearest £ to nearest to nearest £
Details £
B2 Other - - -
monetary assets - - -
Fund to Current
Cost
which asset value
(optional)
Details belongs (optional)
B3 Investment - -
----- End of picture text -----

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ACHIEVEMENTS, CHALLENGES	ACHIEVEMENTS, CHALLENGES	ACHIEVEMENTS, CHALLENGES	AND LOOKING	AND LOOKING	AHEAD	AHEAD
assets						-	-

						-	-

						-	-

						-	-

	Details		Fund to which asset belongs	Cost (optional)				Current value (optional)
B4 Assets						-	-
retained for the
						-	-
charity’s own use
						-	-

						-	-

			Fund to		Amount			When due
			which		due			(optional)
			liability	(optional)
	Details		relates
B5 Liabilities						-

						-

						-

						-

						-


Signed by one or two trustees on behalf of all the trustees		Signature	Print Name					Date of approval


			Ruth Beecher					23/1/2026





			Ann Joye					23/1/2026



			Evelyn Kerrigan					23/1/2026

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CONTACT INFORMATION

Úna Gan a Gúna: Irish Women’s Oral History Collective Email faisneis@unaganaguna.org Website: Unaganaguna.org Postal address: c/o LONDON IRISH CENTRE 52 CAMDEN SQUARE LONDON NW1 9XB

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