Bovalley Community Association
82 Drumachose Park, Limavady BT49 0NZ bovalleycommunity@gmail.com Tel: 02877767195
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- ANNUAL REPORT 2023 2024
TRUSTEES:
Current Trustee’s are: Chairperson Hazel Brooks Treasurer Amanda McGillion Secretary Laura McGillion Trustee Support Karen Brown
The Trustee and Members would like to thank all volunteers, users, residents, statutory agencies including Causeway Coast and Glens Council, Northern Ireland Housing Executive, and Supporting Communities for their continued support over the past year.
KINGS AWARD FOR VOLUNTARY SERVICE:
Bovalley Community Association was awarded the King’s Award for Voluntary Service in November 2024. Whilst we will report more on this in our next Annual Report 2024-2025. We feel it will be remiss of us to exclude it on this occasion. We are super proud of all our volunteers not only for being nominated but for also achieving such a prestigious award for the recognition of all the work that our volunteers do for our local community.
PROGRAMMES AND PROJECTS:
Bovalley Community Association is completely led by volunteers and only has one part-time Youth Co-Ordinator who started in July 2023. This makes Bovalley Community Association very unique.
KAST (Kids are Stronger Together) Youth Clubs
This year brought a change, as the number of participants has increased since the Covid-19 Pandemic. Given the large number of young people engaging, and limited space we have in the building, we had to split the KAST Youth Club into two groups. P1 to P3 known as Junior and P4 to Y8 known as Intermediate. We are pleased to report that throughout the year, the growth has been ongoing with more young people wanting to engage with Bovalley Community Association. This has created the necessity of employing a part-time Youth Co-Ordinator.
KAST delivers a range of educational programmes with additional fun elements to make is more engaging for the young people.
CHAT (Community, Harmony and Togetherness)
CHAT is a programme run on Tuesday mornings for ladies aged 18+ and involves them getting together over a cuppa with breakfast, usually eggs and toast. The ladies enjoy the safe space we have created for them, to open up about the issues they face on a daily basis. We also include a variety of awareness sessions, including breast awareness given by the Pink Ladies and Money Matters. The ladies love to play bingo on the odd occasion and our Christmas Programme of Cooking up Christmas was very useful in providing ingredients to assist with their own Christmas dinner at home especially given the current cost of living crisis that everyone is facing.
Busy Fingers
Busy Fingers run on a Wednesday morning for ladies aged 18+ and involves a variety of crafts. We have exceptional volunteers with amazing crafting abilities which they are happy to share with the group. We have achieved many different crafts including, knitting, crocheting, painting, sewing by hand, sewing by machine, horticulture, cooking programmes, decoupage, chicken scratch and baking, to name a few. The group continues to grow which is very encouraging.
Jolly Tots
Jolly Tots is a parent/caregiver with toddlers group. They meet every Thursday morning and enjoy engaging with other parents with toddlers. The morning involves playing with toys, singing, eating snacks and learning a variety of fun activities. They have successfully run the odd fun day with the little ones and utilising our outside space. Water play and messy play also factor into a very enjoyable morning.
Healthy Walks
We have completed 3 healthy walks during the past year, and the ladies have enjoyed visiting Roe Valley Country Park, Castlerock and Ballycastle to have these healthy walks. We have taken into account all users abilities and have catered for some of our users who have disability issues.
Messines and Holocaust Programme
Bovalley Community Association, along with The International School of Peace Studies carried out 2 programmes. The Holocaust Programme was a taster programme, and then this was followed by the Messines Programme which specifically specialised in WW1. This programme was opened up to the wider community and 15 participants, both male and female learnt about the Battle of Messines via an OCN Qualification.
FINANCE:
Bovalley Community Association has managed to secure funding from:
Halifax Foundation £ 5,000.00 CC&G Council £ 6,425.00 COAST £ 400.00 Children In Need £15,000.00 EA £ 6,981.00 SSE £ 8,000.00 NIHE £ 1,200.00 Arn Foundation £10,000.00
This funding has enabled Bovalley Community Association to provide a variety of programmes and projects which included some funding for running costs.
MEETINGS AND LINKS:
Bovalley Community Association engages with Limavady Community Network Inter-Agency Meetings Tenants Panel Meetings/NIHE Community Network Intergenerational Meetings Money Matters