40 Years of Supporting Communities Celebrated at Stormont

Colm McDaid, Chief Executive, Supporting Communities

Supporting Communities marked its 40th Anniversary at an event in Stormont this past Thursday featuring testimonials from several key stakeholders and service users. The theme for the day was “Looking Back to Look Forward”.

The Chief Executive, Colm McDaid, looked back at the origins of the organisation as a single project in the Doury Road area of Ballymena which empowered residents to stand up, be heard, and hold statutory agencies accountable for providing for the needs of their community.

Acting as a trusted friend who could help communities to access those in power making the decisions that affected them, the Project quickly gained recognition from the Housing Executive and other agencies who saw the benefits of involving residents in their processes through an independent and impartial mediator. This approach developed and expanded over the years into what is the key tenant participation and grassroots community development organisation in Northern Ireland, now called Supporting Communities.

With staff based throughout Northern Ireland, the charity now works directly with over 540 active groups providing advice, support, training, funding help, and information to empower communities to make their areas great places to live.

Representatives of three of these groups spoke about their own experiences with Supporting Communities, demonstrating the impact that the charity has had on their neighbourhoods and environment, their capacity to grow their own organisations, and their personal development.

Dave McGuckin, Doury Road Development Group

Dave McGuckin of the Doury Road Development Group detailed the range of practical and hands-on support his group has received over the years to access funding and to work with statutory agencies to make life-affirming changes to an area with a bad reputation for drugs and dereliction. A big part of that is the relationship he has developed with the staff at Supporting Communities and just knowing that help is there when they need it.

“If it wasn’t for the personal support of the individuals like Gillian, Stephen and others that make up Supporting Communities, volunteers like ourselves couldn’t keep facing these challenges. To have someone smiling, advising, boosting morale and simply saying, “Go on, you can do it”, is invaluable”, he said addressing the audience in the Long Gallery.

Aaron Thompson & David McPhillips with SC Staff Steven Marks and Murray Watts

Aaron Thompson and David McPhillips from Killynure Community Association spoke about their educational journey with Supporting Communities. Neither had left school with any qualifications nor given much thought to any further study when they became involved in their community association. After taking a few courses through Supporting Communities’ training programme, they saw how the skills they were gaining could be put to good use for the benefit of Killynure. Over the course of a few years, Aaron and Dave completed every accredited course Supporting Communities had to offer which gained them enough credits to access the University of Ulster where they both graduated with an Advanced Diploma in Social Enterprise. They are now busy putting their education into practice, implementing exciting plans for their area including a social enterprise multi-use games facility.

“We wouldn’t have had the knowledge or the confidence to do what we are doing now. We always wanted to make changes and improvements in our area, but Supporting Communities gave us the pathway and support to get there.”

Patricia McQuillan addressing the Long Gallery

Patricia McQuillan also addressed the event with her personal story of participation and empowerment that has resulted from her initial involvement with Supporting Communities nearly 20 years ago. Coming from a small resident’s group in the rural hamlet of Moneydig, Patricia has gotten involved at every level of governance and participation within the Housing Community Network, has been a board member of Supporting Communities, and of her local Policing Board, and now sits on the Housing Policy Panel (to name just a few of her many roles!) Patricia was even recognised by the Queen with an MBE for services to rural communities.

“Looking back, I can say I wouldn’t be sitting on all these important strategic groups if it wasn’t for Supporting Communities. They have been a constant in my ‘empowerment’ journey for the past 20 years and I know I can rely on their support in the future.”

Turning towards the future, the Chair of Supporting Communities, Lorraine Campbell, detailed the organisations’ ambitious new strategic priorities that will diversify and grow the organisation.

Lorraine Cambell, Chair of Supporting Communities

“You’ll note that our strapline is Empowering Society”, she said alluding to the organisation’s strategic priorities on the screen, “This illustrates the breadth of our ambitions. It is our view that working with residents has a much wider impact than simply improving housing and communities, we empower people to let their voices be heard, we help them to acquire skills to identify what needs to be done, and we support them to make things happen.”

She went on to officially launch not one, but two new initiatives that illustrate the new, diverse, ambitious Supporting Communities: The Tenant Participation Standards, and ‘the Amp!’

“We take very seriously our role as the appointed Independent Tenant Organisation for Northern Ireland and feel we can offer much more”, she said. “Like our sister organisations, TPAS England, Scotland and Cymru, we have developed a set of tenant participation standards for Northern Ireland that will provide landlords with a professional, independent evaluation of their tenant engagement and guidance on how to improve their service”, she said.

The TP Standards are officially launched!

“We have been encouraged by housing associations’ efforts in developing their TP strategies, and there is some truly impressive engagement in the sector, but we feel we could take it to the next level with a set of standards which we will promote within a TP accreditation scheme.”

“The Amp is a new NI resident’s survey series which enables everyone to easily express their views on a range of community and housing-related issues. “We see this as another means of Supporting Communities giving tenants a voice”, explained Lorraine. “The Welsh government uses TPAS Cymru to obtain tenant feedback to help inform their policies, and we think we could perform this function here not just for the Department for Communities but for all our stakeholders. We can issue surveys and provide you with prompt feedback on issues.” She pointed everyone towards materials to get registered with ‘The Amp’.

Spread the word about the Amp!

Several of Supporting Communities partners and stakeholders also spoke at the event to congratulate the charity on 40 great years and to express their support for our future developments including Clark Bailie of the Housing Executive, Ben Collins from NIFHA, Caron Alexander from the Department of Finance, and Paul Price from the Department of Communities.

Concluding the event, Lorraine Campbell thanked everyone for coming and for supporting the charity. She had special words of praise for the service users who offered their own personal stories of empowerment through Supporting Communities.

“To the community representatives, I felt such pride at you all standing up here and speaking on both your own behalf as well as that of your own communities.  Your words of thanks really resonated with me and as Colm mentioned you are why we do this job.”  

Happy Birthday Supporting Communities!