Our New Start in Our New Building
Firstly, welcome to Compass House we hope you have all settled into your new home, have found your feet and are enjoying all your great new facilities as much as we are. It has been an absolute pleasure seeing everyone enjoying all we have to offer here at Compass House with many familiar faces along with all the new faces.
As you will all be aware we are still continuing to improve and increase all the facilities that are available to you such as more equipment for the sensory room, the plans for the sensory garden/trail and the completion of the shower facilities, along with more courses and activities for the very near future.
Our First Year
The first half of the year has been an exciting time for us all firstly bringing all the team back together under one roof, secondly welcoming all to our new home and seeing the club grow from strength to strength.
In January we re-introduced our membership scheme which has proven to be extremely popular with over eighty members taking advantage of the scheme and the benefits it carries. We welcome all our new members to Local Mencap Barnsley.
February saw our official Grand opening with the Mayor kindly cutting the Ribbon. The day was a great success with lots of people taking the opportunity to come and look around the building and what we have to offer in way of facilities and activities. Take A Bow had a great opportunity to show case their singing and dancing as all our guests were able to pop their heads in to their session and see our Tabbers in action, which left quite a few feeling extremely emotional, Thank you Tabbers for putting on the showcase for us.
We have had two huge great fund-raising events this year, the first being the Yorkshire three peaks challenge and the second being the Great North Run. We can’t thank the teams enough for giving up their time to train and take part in both events raising over £5000.00 between the events and if that wasn’t enough Bartec Auto ID Ltd recognised their hard work and efforts trying to raise much needed funds by match funding £2500.00 to both events taking the total raised well up and over the £10,000.00 mark. So, the biggest thank you to the teams and to Bartec Auto ID Ltd. The money they have raised has gone towards keeping the club running and the lifesaving defibrillator which we have had installed outside our main gates to ensure not only our members but also our whole community has 24-hour access to life saving equipment.
This year we applied for funding to Tesco’s and Co-Operative, Tesco selected Local Mencap Barnsley as on of their charities for the Bags of Help Campaign where the local community showed us great support resulting in us receiving the top amount of £4,000, and Co-Operative chose Local Mencap Barnsley as one of their charities of the year with their members kindly donating £2,700 to us. Their support has helped us hugely to keep activities running smoothly and to purchase much needed new equipment.
In June our amazing Take A Bow Theatre Group Stole the show with their as ever show stopping performance of The Lemonade Kid putting on their three sell out performances and bringing the house down with each performance, well done each and every one of you who took part and made the show possible. We are all now eagerly awaiting your Christmas show.
This year has also seen a huge increase in the activities we offer from the WEA (Workers Educational Association) we have grown from offering one session per week to eight sessions at present, these sessions are running within our existing sessions helping us to offer a wider range of opportunities and options to everyone who attends our club, amongst these are Tai Chi, Creative Writing, Reading, Baking, Sugar Craft and Creative Crafts. For any further information on these added extras we offer please see staff.
Barnsley college have Presented us with the award for provider of the year recognising all the hard work put into student work placements. This is a wonderful achievement for us as a team and we look forward to welcoming and making students more aware of the world of Learning Disabilities.
We would like to take this opportunity to take a moment to hold Carrie Hanson in our thoughts who we sadly lost this year. Carrie has been a huge part of our club and is sadly missed.
Club Membership and Activity Prices
Following on from the success of the membership scheme which was introduced in January and current membership due to expire on the 31st of December we will offer the scheme again to run for the duration of 2020 from the 1st of January. Any current members will have until the 31st of January to re-new their membership with the club with the biggest benefit being the privilege of reduced activity prices leading to a great saving over the twelve months membership. To renew your membership please complete the renewal forms and return to the office along with the £25.00 membership fee.
We have looked closely at our pricing structure and we are pleased to say that membership will remain at £25.00 for 12 months. There is however a change to some of the activity prices due to increasing cost, we want to ensure we can keep all our activities running. Please see attached price list for new prices which will be effective from 1st January 2020
Volunteer Opportunities
Our thanks and praise go out to our amazing team of volunteers with your hard work and dedication our club is shining bigger and brighter every day.
With a bright amazing future ahead of the club we with a whole host of new activities coming your way will have a whole lot of new exciting opportunities for volunteers. As the club expands, we will be recruiting volunteers. If you think you have what it takes or know someone who has what it takes to become a supportive, energetic, full of enthusiasm and new ideas volunteer and would like to join our team then please get in touch and ask for an application form.
Looking Forward
We have recently received news that Yorkshire Bank, soon to be known as Virgin Money, have selected Royal Mencap as their charity of the year the great news being that Yorkshire Banks Barnsley branch have elected to work with Local Mencap Barnsley. We have already had meetings with Kirsty from the Yorkshire Bank, and they are all looking forward to getting involved with our fundraising next year and are working hard on fund raising of their own to donate to us.
Also, we are looking forward to working with the team from Bartec Auto ID Ltd raising funds as they show their wonderful endless support. We thank all the team from the bottom of our hearts for all their support and dedication to our club and our members.
We as a team at Local Mencap Barnsley would like to take this opportunity to Thank you all for your continued support in helping us to maintain and grow our wonderful club for all our members. We wish all a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year and look forward to welcoming you all back I the New Year.
From all the team at Local Mencap Barnsley.
