Dunmurry Community Association
ANNUAL REPORT 2022 – 2023
DUNMURRY COMMUNITY ASSOCIATION
ANNUAL REPORT APRIL 2022 – MARCH 2023
INTRODUCTION
The Management Committee of Dunmurry Community Association (DCA) presents the following as our annual report for the period between April 2022 and March 2023 inclusive. The Annual Report is presented as a fair and accurate reflection of the state of affairs, services, events, and programmes held by the DCA during the period under review. It also highlights the opportunities and challenges that we have encountered as an association over this period. Finally, the report presents some of our major projections for the year ahead. While the report is mainly a general summary.
GENERAL STATEMENT
We held our AGM on 21 February 2023, a few members stepped down and we elected some new members onto our committee. Our senior citizens group the 1-2-3 club started back in September 2022. We secured more funding this year with the National Lottery Awards for All grants, which has helped improve the overall quality of our services and increased our programme delivery outputs for 2023. This successful year has seen DCA delivering more programmes and activities than we have done in previous years. Although, we have encountered a number of challenges over the past year, our commitment to the values of promoting an inclusive, shared, safe, and engaging community based on equality, equity, diversity, and respect remains unchanged.
1. MANAGEMENT AND ADMINISTRATION
1.1 DCA has an elected management committee who oversee the governance and general administration of the association. The management committee is the decision making body responsible for planning and day-to-day running of the association.
2. STAFF AND VOLUNTEERS
2.1 With no paid staff members, DCA has relied heavily on volunteers to help us deliver the important services we deliver to the community. Volunteers have been a part of the structure of DCA throughout its history. We currently have a mixture of regular and seasonal/sessional volunteers whose time and skills have been vital to our success especially for this reporting period. Over the last twelve months, we have managed to recruit new volunteers from all different sections and backgrounds within the community.
Registered Charity: NIC105014 HMRC: XR73034
Dunmurry Community Association
ANNUAL REPORT 2022 – 2023
3. GRANT FUNDING
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3.1 We secured funding from the Northern Ireland Housing Executive from their community cohesion fund which funded our Family Fun event in July 2022.
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3.2 We also secured funding from Belfast City Council for our Queens Platinum Jubilee event in June 2022 and also from the Christmas Goodwill Fund which helped with our Christmas party for our senior citizens in December 2022.
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3.3 Belfast City Council also funded most of our running costs.
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3.4 We secured funding from James Brown and Sons with their Community Grant which covered costs for our youth clubs Halloween and Christmas parties.
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3.5 We were lucky to receive a community grant from Version 1 in May 2022 to buy some sports equipment for our youth club.
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3.6 We were awarded a community grant in January 2022 by Awards for All from the National Lottery; this grant will cover First Aid training for our service users and community events running from March 2023 to December 2023.
4. PROGRAMMES AND ACTIVITIES
| EVENT | July Family Fun Day |
Summer Scheme |
Halloween Disco |
Christmas Fun Day |
Lunch with Santa for Seniors |
St Patrick Day |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DATE | Fri 8 or Sat 9 Jul 12pm – 3pm |
Mon 15-Fri 19 Aug 10am-1pm P1-P4 2.30pm- 4.30pm P4- P7 |
Fri 28 Oct 6pm – 8pm |
Fri 9 or 16 Dec 6pm – 8pm |
Wed 7 or 14 Dec 12 noon – 2pm |
Fri 17 March 2023 12pm to 3pm |
| ACTIVITIES | BBQ Inflatable’s face painting Play Bus 1- 2pm Slushie/Candy Floss Amazon Jungle Show 2-3pm |
Art & Crafts (Mon- Thurs 10-1pm) Multi Sports (Mon- Thurs 2- 5pm) Trip to We are Vertigo (Fri 19 Aug) |
Disco Face painting Glitter Tattoos Balloon modellin g Ghostbu ster Best dressed competit ion Party Food / Snacks |
Disco Visit from Santa on sleigh Selection Boxes for Kids Visit from Anna, Elsa & The Grinch Party Food / Snacks |
Christmas dinners – 12.15pm Dessert @ 1.15pm Tea/Coffee @2pm Entertainment |
Wee Bugs and Beasts Face painting Glitter Tattoos Balloon modelling Candy Floss/Popc orn machine Leprechaun character |
Registered Charity: NIC105014 HMRC: XR73034
Dunmurry Community Association
ANNUAL REPORT 2022 – 2023
5. CHILDREN AND YOUNG PEOPLE
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5.1 We are pleased to confirm that our Youth Hub is still on every Friday evening. It has been fantastic to be able to provide activities and a safe space for children and young people from P1 to 5[th] year to learn, share and socialise together with their peers.
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5.2 Please refer to the attached Summer Scheme Programme for 2023.
6. SENIOR CITIZENS
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6.1 Our 1-2-3 Club, senior citizens club, meet every Wednesday morning.
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6.2 Members of the 123 club attended our Christmas Dinner event in December. This brought together members of the 1-2-3 Club as well as other senior citizens within the Dunmurry area.
7. CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES
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7.1 Changing from Lisburn City Council into Belfast City Council has brought us a lot of opportunities but has been a big challenge for us over the last year although we are now adjusting at a faster pace and hope to be fully in tune with the modus operandi of Belfast City Council. We believe that once we get firmly established with the new council area, we would be able to do a lot more.
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7.2 Growth of our Youth Hub is amazing but lack of staff and volunteers is making the work with the young people difficult to manage at times. We advertised via Volunteer Now last year and recruited some new youth volunteers but unfortunately they have now left leaving us in the same position. We plan to advertise for more volunteers via social media in the coming months.
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7.3 With more new projects about to commence, our staff and volunteer capacity will be very stretched and overworked hence we look to recruit more to help deliver our projects with the best quality.
8. PARTNERSHIPS AND SUPPORT
- 8.1 DCA recognises the power of partnership working in the community sector and have always ensured that we engage and collaborate with other organisations as part of our strategic objectives. Over the last year, we managed to keep our partnership with the Greater Dunmurry Positive Relations Partnership and other local community Organisations like
Registered Charity: NIC105014 HMRC: XR73034
Dunmurry Community Association
ANNUAL REPORT 2022 – 2023
Seymour Hill & Conway Residents Association, Colin Glen Trust, Colin Neighbourhood Partnership, Indian and Pakistani communities among others and the Areema Advisory Group.
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8.2 Belfast City Council Staff have been very supportive and have had regular support meetings with DCA.
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8.3 Supporting Communities have helped DCA with a number of funding applications, organised interagency meeting, given us support and advice and had regular support meetings with the organisation.
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8.4 DCA have renewed our membership of the Northern Ireland Council for Voluntary Action (NICVA).
9. TRAINING AND DEVELOPMENT
- 9.1 In order to enhance our volunteers’ knowledge and skills, we are sourcing Child Protection (Safeguarding Children) Training for our volunteers and committee members to refresh training for exiting members and up skill any new members. We hope this training will be completed within the next few months. We are also providing Defibrillator and First Aid training in the near future.
10. PROJECTIONS FOR 2023
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10.1 We hope to recruit and train new volunteers with different skill sets to help with the general administration and running of DCA to enable us to continue the good work we are doing within the community.
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10.2 More funding will be sourced to support the recruitment and employment of an office worker to help during office hours to allow us to offer more services and facilities within our community.
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10.3 We hope to create a volunteer handbook and update our policies and procedures.
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10.4 Widen our horizons through doing more education, learning, and development projects.
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10.5 Establish new network connections within the community.
11. CONCLUSION
- 11.1 DCA had a very exciting and successful year. Although there were a lot of challenges along the way, the association was able to secure enough funds and gain relevant support to deliver most of our popular projects and programmes planned for the year. The committee
Registered Charity: NIC105014 HMRC: XR73034
Dunmurry Community Association
ANNUAL REPORT 2022 – 2023
has been relentless in ensuring the smooth running of operations and securing the future of DCA within the community through various guarantees, and the continuous support of the community and through diverse partnerships which we have worked hard to establish. The success of DCA has been a collaborative effort and we hope to build on this.
Registered Charity: NIC105014 HMRC: XR73034