Journey, With Love
Trustees Annual Report Year Ended August 2023
Registered Charity Number: 1200217 Address:
Email: journeywithlove@outlook.com
Objectives and Activities
The purpose of Journey With Love is the relief of need of traumatised families with children, by providing Journey With Love bags containing items of basic necessity and comfort in times of crisis.
Journey With Love provide a hand-made, gender-neutral bag which contains a Journey Bear, connection bracelets, and a journal with pencil and coloured crayons in a case. These are distributed to families with children through refuges and hostels. Journey with Love care for the environment by including upcycled pre-loved teddy bears in its handmade bags. All bags contain a leaflet explaining the purpose of the contents for parents, and the story behind the charity being formed through lived experience of the co-founders.
Journey with Love packages are made With Love and aim to strengthen the bond between parent and child, and in making positive connections with others following traumatic experiences.
Governance and Structure
Journey With Love is constituted and became a registered charity on 30[th] August 2022. The committee currently consists of 7 trustees who meet regularly to support the ongoing activities of the organisation. The Chairperson for the charity is Ms Siobhan O’Leary.
Achievements and Performance
In total, Journey With Love has donated 192 ‘With Love’ bags to families with children in Refuges across the UK. The charity continues to work closely with Refuges including Boston Women’s Aid (Lincolnshire), Hestia (London), The Blue Door (Scunthorpe), and EDAN Lincs Outreach support (West Lindsey) and Care 4 Calais London.
Journey With Love are currently working on making new connections with further women’s refuges to expand donations to other areas.
Journey With Love are keen to gather feedback from both families who have received packages and professionals working within the field. This ensures that packages are fit for purpose and that they are adding value to the lives of families living in a Refuge.
As a result of this activity over the past year, the charity has provided bespoke bags to Refuges based on the recipients' needs. The charity is also keen to gather feedback which will help shape future packages offered to families within Refuge. This year, listening to feedback from professionals has led to the development of the Journey With Love packages as toolkits for practitioners working with families in Refuge.
Considerations for the future:
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Discussions around additional services which could be developed and offered to Women’s Refuges, including lived experience talks facilitated by Karen Broughton, the Co-Founder of the charity.
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Facilitating sewing sessions / workshops overseen by volunteers in local community spaces to create Journey With Love bags which would then be donated to local women’s Refuges. These sessions would aim to support members of the public to upskill, and also raise awareness of domestic abuse.
Statement of Financial Activities for the year ending 31[st] August 2023
The Journey With Love Co-operative bank account was set up during the financial year 2023 and became active in May 2023. An amount of £54.50 was transferred into the account from the Just Giving page previously running during COVID, with the Journey With Love account now showing all monies held by the Charity.
A further £168.00 donation was secured from a local business to enable the development of the website, this represents restricted funds within the account to be carried forward.
Financial statement: 31[st] August 2023
| Unrestricted | Restricted | Total Funds | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Funds | Funds | ||
| Total income from | 95.00 | ||
| donations & Just Giving | |||
| Income for website | 168.00 | ||
| Total incoming funds | 95.00 | 168.00 | 263.00 |
| Expenditure on: | |||
| Materials and items for | 24.15 | ||
| bags | |||
| Fund raising | 7.99 |
| Total expenditure | 32.14 | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Total Funds carried | 62.86 | 168.00 | 230.86 |
| forward |
A Finance Policy has been adopted, including the handling of Petty Cash. The policy will be reviewed by the Charity Trustees on an annual basis.