Supporting Communities

Happy #TrusteesWeek! We want to take this opportunity to thank our fantastic board members, who volunteer their time and expertise to lead Supporting Communities in creating empowered, confident, and cohesive communities. David Maher, Lorraine Campbell, Justin Cartwright, Caroline Casserly Farrar, Kelly Foster, Anthony Kerr, Jim Ripley, Karen Rodgers, Joanne Vance, Ian McCrickard, David Lamb, and Ivan Armstrong. We look forward to seeing everyone next month at our AGM!

Supporting Communities is thrilled to announce the recipients of its prestigious 2024 #scholarships. Four outstanding students have been selected, two each for The Gallaher Trust and The James Kane Foundation scholarships. These students demonstrate exceptional academic achievement, community involvement, and personal growth. These scholarships, administered by Supporting Communities, aim to nurture talent and create opportunities for promising young individuals in our community. We couldn't be prouder to have played a part in their academic journey! Read more about these impressive young women here: https://lnkd.in/eEtdex8R

Looking forward to taking part in this Four Nations event!

Congratulations to Choice Housing Ireland Ltd in attaining #SilverAward in Supporting Communities #TPAccreditation. Tremendous recognition for the commitment of your Board and Staff to #tenantengagement within and across the organisation as well providing great confidence to your tenants and stakeholders on adopting a culture of engagement and customer involvement. Very well done ✅👏🎉 #NextLevelTP; Helping to raise the TP bar across the island Carol Ervine Dawn Purvis Sheenagh Mc Nally David Maher Lorraine Campbell NIFHA - Northern Ireland Federation of Housing Associations Seamus Leheny Irish Council for Social Housing Donal McManus

A fantastic #Community Conference 2024 held in Ballymena at which the 300 attendees were #inspired by a range of wonderful speakers including; Kheron Gilpin JP Flintoff, Cohen Taylor, Brian O'Neill, David Hunter Nicole Lappin John McMullan. The Conference was rightly and ably hosted by the Central Housing Forum Chair, Linda Watson and Vice Chair, Patricia McQuillan There was a diverse range of topics presented, among them; Engaging our Youth through Apprenticeship Programmes and young people becoming more involved in community activities and engaging with social landlords, Community Wealth Building as well video presentations on the work of the Housing Community Network (HCN) over the past year. It was a pleasure to meet with our Communities Minister, Gordon Lyons, Department for Communities who made reference to the work of Supporting Communities as the Dept's Independent Tenant Organisation (ITO) Patricia Leathley. Of course, the main focus of the day was the launch of the Community Involvement & Cohesion Strategy 2024-29 by Grainia Long, Chief Executive, Northern Ireland Housing Executive and we, in Supporting Communities, look forward to supporting our #KeyStakeholder in the implementation of the Strategy's Action Plan going forward. #TogetherWeCan David Maher Lorraine Campbell Joanne Vance Karen Rodgers Anthony Kerr Caroline Casserly Farrar Justin Cartwright Kelly Foster Karen Weir Jim Ripley John Mulholland Eddie Mulgrew Sean O'Connor Dr. Bronagh Magee

Congratulations to #Team NIFHA - Northern Ireland Federation of Housing Associations on hosting another excellent 2-day Conference in Fermanagh. The packed but varied program covered many current & pertinent themes affecting #socialhousing locally. A standout #BreakAway Session, expertly chaired by Hazel Bell OBE, featured 3 #TenantChampions who highlighted the benefits of listening to the #tenantvoice and the #livedexperience. William from Choice Housing Ireland Ltd, Carmel from Newington Housing Association and Patricia, Vice Chair of the Central HF and Chair of the Housing Policy Panel & current #TenantAdvocate ALL shared inspiring insights on how engaging with their respective landlords had boosted their confidence and equally empowered them as individuals. Well done to each of them! Grainia Long, Cx of the Northern Ireland Housing Executive, also referenced the All-Ireland Tenant Engagement Conference organised by Supporting Communities last year, emphasising the #opportunities that Conferences, such as the one last year, can bring to participants (tenants, residents, community activists and staff from social landlords) from an all-island perspective. As always, the added value of the Annual NIFHA Conference lay in chatting with and catching up with friends and colleagues from the 'voluntary housing sector' many of whom I hadn't seen for so long, coupled with the fact that the event also afforded opportunities to meet new people from other sectors, showed the real worth of conferences like the one just had. Lovely to meet and chat with Wendy Austin MBE who chaired the 2 days so professionally and with such ease 👏 Well done to all involved in the organisation of the event from NIFHA Seamus Leheny Sally McCone Tracey Ellis Clara Robinson Amy McClelland 👏 Anthony Kerr Kerry Boyd FCIM Nicole Lappin Professor Paddy Gray Kelly Andrews Patrick Minne Donal Conway Mark Graham Jim McShane Jim Black Agnes Crawford Ailbhe Hickey Pól Callaghan Tony Giffen Carol McTaggart Triangle Housing Association Rural Housing Association Limited Stephen Fisher Sorcha Edwards Valerie McConville MBA, CIPD, Dip Psy C. Leeann Vincent judith McNamee Emma Little-Pengelly BL MLA Justin Cartwright John Hannigan Duncan Orr Caroline Moloney Apex Housing Association

Our senior training officer, Aidan Kearney, is in Dublin today, attending the AIEB symposium on the role of community work education in addressing the complex, intersecting issues affecting communities. We are delighted to be recognised for our #communitydevelopment training course at this event! Irish Council for Social Housing NIFHA - Northern Ireland Federation of Housing Associations Department for Communities Northern Ireland Housing Executive Open College Network Northern Ireland

The Supporting Communities Team held an informative meeting today in the wonderful Black Mountain Shared Space Project (BMSSP) premises in #Belfast. As well as holding our important bi-monthly in-person staff get together, we were delighted to hear from Kerry Donnelly on the professional services provided by the #SocialEnterprise, Kith & Kin Financial Wellbeing which all staff very much enjoyed and came away knowing much more about the diverse range of services provided by Sean Bruen and colleagues. NICVA (Northern Ireland Council for Voluntary Action) Thanks also to Anne Cooke from BMSSP for a tour of the wonderful building/facilities and for sharing the story of the development of the Project until now as well future plans, including the building of social enterprise units to help sustain the new building. David Maher Lorraine Campbell Anthony Kerr Jim Ripley Kelly Foster Joanne Vance Justin Cartwright John Mulholland Eddie Mulgrew Karen Rodgers Karen Weir Colin Jess Amanda Johnston John McMullan #Staff #Team #FinancialWellbeing #RaisingAwareness #GoodPractice

We are delighted to facilitate the Gallaher Trust scholarship for students in Ballymena to study STEM subjects at universities in Northern Ireland. It was a pleasure to attend this event celebrating all the fantastic young people who have benefitted so far!

We had a great day in Bangor this week, speaking to groups at the Hamilton Road Community Hub. Thanks so much to NORTH DOWN COMMUNITY NETWORK for having us along to their weekly 'Cuppa & Connect' group and to the U3A for inviting us to speak to their members about the digital switchover. These folks had plenty of questions about the upcoming change to digital phone services, and we also had some important conversations about scam awareness and online safety, so it was a day well spent! Lovely to meet you all. #DigitalSwitchover #DigitalVoice #onlinesafety #ScamAwareness #DigitalInclusion BT Group