Dickson Hails Support from the National Lottery Community Fund for Several Local Projects

East Antrim Alliance MLA, Stewart Dickson, has welcomed support from the National Lottery Community Fund for several local projects.

Local projects in receipt of National Lottery Community Fund grants, include:

Larne Well-being Hub is using a £10,000 grant to increase their capacity to provide counselling sessions to improve mental health and wellbeing.

The Open Door Centre in Carrickfergus is using a £10,000 grant for staff costs and running costs so they can continue to provide wellbeing activities for the local community. This includes social activities for older people to reduce isolation, a parent and toddlers social support group, a carers support group, and a BabyBank which provides essentials for babies where families are in need.

Children in Northern Ireland is using a £403,849 grant to run a programme of activities to bring children and young people together to get peer support, improve their mental and physical health and address food poverty. Over three years the project is working with Carrickfergus YMCA, the Dry Arch Centre in Limavady and the Patrician Youth Centre in Downpatrick. The activities will help overcome learning loss and educational underachievement, provide access to healthy leisure activities, increase resilience to better cope with mental health issues, build friendships and provide healthy food. The project will also give young people an opportunity to share their lived experience of poverty with policy makers.

Politics in Action in partnership with Start360 is using a £190,000 grant to empower young people from a range of backgrounds to work together and come up with ideas for tackling the challenges in their own lives and in the wider community. Over three years the project will help young people to develop communication and problem-solving skills through a range of meetings and debates. They will also have the opportunity to meet and question elected representatives and end the project by delivering a presentation on their ideas at Stormont. The young people will be recruited mostly from schools but also youth groups across Northern Ireland.

Counselling All Nations Services (CANS) in south Belfast is using a £284,168 grant to run a counselling service for people from BAME communities to increase equality of access to mental health and emotional wellbeing for people of different ethnic backgrounds in Northern Ireland. Over three years the project will provide a free, one-to-one, culturally appropriate counselling service with the aid of interpreters to improve the emotional, physical, mental health and wellbeing of people from BAME communities.

Huntington’s Disease Association Northern Ireland is using a £273,090 grant to deliver services and support to people affected by Huntington’s disease to improve their wellbeing. Over three years the project will run online support groups and activities, face-to-face meetings once restrictions allow, recruit and upskill a bank of sessional counsellors and complementary therapists, share learning and impact, and use the experiences and voices of service users to develop training and advocate for change.

St. John Ambulance (N.I.) is using a £153,000 grant to upskill 52 newly qualified volunteer Emergency Ambulance Crew volunteers from across Northern Ireland. These volunteers will complete their Emergency Driving course which will legally allow them to use blue lights and sirens when transporting critical patients to hospital, which can mean the difference between life and death for critical patients. This three-year project will enable the organisation to continue to support the NHS, particularly at times of crisis.