2006 Joint co-ordinators Report
Whilst we continue to consolidate and develop the work of Windsor Women’s Centre and the services we deliver to women and children in this disadvantaged area, we have worked very hard this year to continue our lobbying for a more sustainable funding environment.
The Voluntary Community Unit continued the emergency funding which allowed us to work closely with the Government Review Group which Minister David Hanson had taken over from John Spellar.
The Minister had several meetings with us on a wide variety of issues including our work as a Women’s Centre being based in a disadvantaged protestant area, the formation of our south west Belfast Neighbourhood Area Partnership (which Windsor is one of 4 elected community representatives) and finally as the Village area with Sandy Row which had a Taskforce report written about.
Hopefully this succession of meetings will bring a broader understanding of the services delivered by Windsor and our continuation of community development and cohesion in the Village area.
The Neighbourhood Area Partnership has worked very hard with the Village and Sandy Row working together for the first time to agree a strategic action plan for our areas for the next ten years.
We look forward to implementing this very detailed plan with the Belfast Regeneration Office and all relevant Statutory Agencies.
As the Village has no community forum we were also involved in bringing together the 9 Community Groups within the Village area, forming a Community Network and it was from this group that the 4 representatives for the Neighbourhood Area Partnerships were duly elected from.
Our responsibility as one of the representatives is to keep the other groups informed, disseminate information and bring issues to the agenda that they might want to raise, we are also keen to keep the group open to any new residents or groups which may emerge. We continue our long term work with Probation Board Northern Ireland taking women on placement who have community service orders to fulfil and thank them for their support.
As the only Women’s Centre in South Belfast we remain highly involved with the Women’s Support Network and have been part of the Women’s groups across Northern Ireland bringing the sector together into an agreed structure of Greater Belfast, Rural and North east. We have had a residential and two conferences which have been a great networking potential for sharing information. We are an active member of the Greater Belfast Advisory Group for women.
Within the Centre we are very lucky to have such a dedicated staff team and voluntary Management Committee, each department continues to develop to meet the needs of women and children in the Village area. The Childcare Co-ordinator represents us on the District Childcare Partnership and is Chair of the Youth Strategy steering group for the area as well as a Board member and vice Chair of the Greater Village Regeneration Trust. She has taken part in many consultations over the year including the Family and Parenting Strategy.
Whilst we continue to work in partnership with Sure Start the other Child Development workers was precarious and we are delighted to see future funding streams now open to us through early years initiatives.
The Education department continue to deliver the usual high quality of work, this year they provided 23 classes per week as well as a host of other things like multicultural awareness training, making a peace drum, employing an ethnic minority woman who has been attending classes herself as a positive classroom assistant and most importantly fundraising including trying to strengthen links with Belfast Institute of Further & Higher Education.
We are less happy about the long term sustainability for Community Education never mind women only Education, but continue to remain optimists, rise to the challenge and put our hopes firmly on Neighbourhood Renewal to move this stalemate forward. The BASE project proved very successful into year 2, where we were able to employ another local woman, making a team of 4 therapists. Sadly this funding was non recurrent and this service including the Counselling will cease in June 06 as the only Mental Health project in the area.
We are keen to find a solution and hope again that the Neighbourhood Action Plan can provide it.
The project has been so successful that we won an award from Glaxo Smith Kline, coming in the top 25 in United Kingdom out of over 350 applications for our impact on Health.
Next year will bring lots of challenges we are sure, we desperately need more classrooms and training space and while we are clearly within Greater Village Regeneration Trust redevelopment plan to build more premises, we hope to find an interim solution with the help of the Execution Trust who are interested in helping us “step-up” the Agency. We would also like to review our policies; contracts etc and create our own web page. We are delighted to have become part of the South Belfast Advice Consortium and be able to open our Advice Unit again in May 05, we would like to thank Ballynafeigh for taking the lead with Belfast City Council.
Within the area we will be actively involved with the Royal Hospitals new Women and children’s hospitals as well as refurbishment of the Ulster Museum.
Finally we would like to thank the staff, volunteers, Management, Tutors and Funder’s and look forward to the challenges of another year as we continue to pursue our fight for sustainability, equality and empowerment for all women who use our services.
ELEANOR JORDAN & HAZEL GAMBLE
JOINT CO-ORDINATOR’S
