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Today marks Halloween, with origins dating back to the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain, the day traditionally marking the eve of the end of summer and the beginning of winter. Many across Northern Ireland will be taking part in the fun activities at this time of year, dressing up and catching up with friends and family. Derry/Londonderry has been hosting Europe’s biggest Halloween Festival and we spoke to one of our grant holders in the city to find out how they plan to bring people together to get involved.

Women’s Centre Derry received £385,525 National Lottery funding to support local families by providing childcare while parents take part in wellbeing programmes, mental health support and parenting groups. Activities include Listening Ear support services, mother and baby activities, programmes to help parents deal with trauma, confidence building for parents to support children impacted by the pandemic, and signposting to other services. 

As part of their five-year project, they held a Halloween fun day on 25^th October at St Columb’s Park House for local families. We spoke to Catherine Barr at the Women’s Centre and she told us a bit more about their activities:

“Our project contributes to the recovery, rebuilding and renewal of people’s lives through supporting local families as they recover from the pandemic and face other life challenges.

Our programmes focus on children’s development and parent’s wellbeing.  We offer mother and baby joint activities and creche places alongside parenting support and health and wellbeing programmes. One of the sessions we offered recently was a Halloween fun day.

Around 40 families came along our seasonal Halloween event and had lots of fun socialising with other families, to support their wellbeing. It was great to see all the young children playing happily and integrating with other children. Activities on the day included a pumpkin patch, sensory play activities, arts and crafts sessions, storytelling sessions, facepainting and lots of Halloween games.

The Halloween fun day helped families who are new to the area meet and chat with families who have been living here for a while.  The interaction between all of the children helped them to develop and strengthen social skills and improving their peer to peer development. Overall, a fun day was had by all who attended, and the activities helped to improve both children and their parent’s wellbeing.

The Halloween event is just a small piece in the jigsaw of activities we can offer to families. Our supporting English through play workshops are very popular with an increased migrant community population in the city of Derry.

We have many wellbeing programmes, workshops and joint mother and baby programmes coming up. Our programme of activities includes mother and baby yoga, new mum wellbeing programme Speech and language development workshops.  We also offer workshops focusing on child development and health focusing on nutrition for kids, Paediatric First aid, Sleep Hygiene workshop, Behaviour workshop Sensory playtime for babies and Toilet training workshops to name a few. Our Mother and Baby walking group and Mother and Baby swimming clubs remain ever popular too.

We are looking forward to working with families and continuing to provide support to them through the Recover, Rebuild, Renew project which is funded thanks to National Lottery players.”

Another National Lottery funded project, Glen Development Initiative, are running a House of Horrors as part of their seasonal offering this year. It has proved extremely popular this year also and has been a catalyst in bringing people together to have some spooky fun.

Glen Development Initiative received just over £265,000 through People and Communities for their four-year Greater Glen Connecting Communities project.  This community led project brings people together in a wide range of activities to address issues such as isolation and physical and mental health. Activities are open to all ages and programmes include provision of a Golden Years Club, Hen/men’s shed, Parents and Toddlers group, Youth Club, Women’s Group, Photography Club, Horticultural Programmes, as well as various seasonal events. 

We hope you enjoyed hearing more about what National Lottery supported groups have been up to this Halloween and more about the support they offer to people in their local area.

We’d love to hear from you about how National Lottery funding is benefitting your community so drop us a message below or email our team at enquiries.ni@tnlcommunityfund.org.uk.