ONSIDE Project Celebrates a Successful Conclusion

The ONSIDE Project held a celebration at The Junction in Dungannon earlier this month to mark a successful conclusion. It was a wonderful event that brought participants together, many of whom were finally getting to meet for the first time in person!

ONSIDE stands for Outreach, Navigation, Social Inclusion and Digital Engagement.  It is a cross border project aiming to improve the health and wellbeing of disabled people living in Northern Ireland and the border regions. Disability Action NI led the project in partnership with the Northern Ireland Housing Executive, the Independent Living Movement in Ireland and Supporting Communities.

The project aimed to address and reduce social isolation for disabled people by helping to create community connections of their choosing. ONSIDE provided tailored support for participants to establish social connections alongside digital skills training and equipment, allowing them to connect to online communities.

Some of The Supporting Communities ONSIDE Team (Staff and Board Members)

As the partner organisation providing the digital skills training, Supporting Communities is proud of what we have been able to achieve. When we first attended the project launch back in March 2020, we had no idea about the challenges coming our way. It was always going to be a stretch to reach and support over 2,000 disabled participants in under three years, but adding a global pandemic into the mix definitely upped the pressure!

Spurred on by the urgency of the situation, our digital training team got to work quickly, moving everything online and reconfiguring lessons. Participants also embraced the online nature of the project, telling us that ‘social isolation’ and ‘lockdown’ were unfortunately not new concepts to many disabled people who had limited or restricted access to transport, no after-hours social care, and limited use of the internet. In a way, doing everything online leveled the playing field a bit! We were all learning new ways of working and felt we were in it together.

Now, as the project comes to a close next month, we can reflect on what a truly extraordinary time this was. We feel lucky to have touched so many lives and made a real difference. There will be a full report available soon, but in the meantime, one of our favourite testimonials sums it all up so well:

“This has been absolutely amazing. I would go so far as to say life-altering - in fact, life-giving! Prior to joining this course and being given the tablet to use, I had no purpose, no outlet, no visitors either. I felt isolated and alone. My brain had become a dead space.

This has felt like opening a doorway into my home through which friends have called round every week. And through this doorway, I now have access to a whole new way of life, new options to investigate, and experiences that I can now access, and all in the comfort of my own home.

I feel excited about my future and about the things that I can now do and the people and community I feel like a part of through ONSIDE and also beyond the Project itself. To say THANK YOU does not even begin to cover the level of gratitude I want to convey for this opportunity.

Thank you for opening up a whole new world for me.”

The project was supported by an award of €5.56m by the European Union’s INTERREG VA Programme, a programme managed by the Special EU Programmes Body (SEUPB).