At Crossing Together Toddlers we aim to provide a fun, warm, safe, welcoming and accessible space for babies and toddlers to come along with their grown-ups from Bourtreehill and the surrounding areas of Irvine.  In setting up the group we initially looked at accessing funding to purchase equipment and toys however a toddler group in Troon had recently folded and they gifted us items that meant we could launch the group immediately. The group is free of charge to families to access and weekly snacks and craft materials are provided through donations and fundraising.  It is important for us to maintain a no charge policy to maximise accessibility due to the cost of living crisis and our locality being significantly impacted with regards poverty.  Weekly snacks provided are balanced with items like fruit, toast and juice/water being provided for the children and a warm drink and biscuits for the grown-ups.  As well as the weekly sessions we want to provide the families with new experiences that can include their older children and partners which will extend the community spirit that is being built in and around the group already.  These new experiences include family fun days, parties, trips and days out locally and further afield. 

Many of the families who attend the group rarely travel outwith Irvine and it would be great to improve the health and wellbeing through a summer trip to a farm park, which would provide a new experience by seeing the animals we sing about and read about at our weekly song and story time.  A Christmas Party with entertainment, hospitality and a visit from Santa would also encourage positive mental health during the festive time that brings much stress with extra financial outgoing in winter.  A weekend family fun day using the local park space would enable us to include working parents and older children and through hospitality/food and fun activities create a positive aspect to a park area that carries much saddness in the community and encourage resislience and new owership of the local space. 

For Crossing Together to provide these experiences at no cost to the families in our locality we would be applying for the PB Locality Funding to help meet these costs as well as doing additional fundraising and seeking donations.

Examples of costings to provide such experiences are:-

Farm park admission (approx 80 people includes under 2s free) = £625

Childrens Party Entertainer = £125

Gifting from Santa (approx 40 gifts) = £120

Hospitality Party/Funday = £130

Additional costings for items like craft materials and additional hospitality would be sought through donations and fundraising.

Trindlemoss Day Opportunities is based in Irvine. Trindlemoss aims to transform community attitudes to better support and promote opportunities for people with learning disabilities and address mental health. We will help individuals share their strengths and skills with the community and encourage recognition for their input.

Throughout all our work, we stay focused on our customers, and the relationships that support and enrich them.

The group would like to organise social events in the evenings to utilise the building in the evening and invite parents, carers, family and friends to participate monthly to begin with to meet up with a long-term goal of making it a weekly meet up depending on how many family and friends would like to support this .

This would encourage a peer support group where the adults with learning disabilities would have the opportunity to meet up with their friends and socialise in the evening. The group would also give parents and carers, family and other care supports the opportunity to make friends and meet up with other parents and carers and support workers who support people with learning disabilities.

Trindlemoss also have residents who would also benefit from social events it would give them the opportunity to meet their neighbours.

The criteria we meet is Health and Wellbeing as Friends of Trindlemoss would promote physical and mental wellbeing the project would address social isolation, bring the community together.

The people who reside in the houses have mental health and learning disabilities so we also hit the criteria for building community spirits as we want to create a venue that is also an environment that they know. We also have other groups who use our building like Healing Hearts who have also shown an interest in volunteering, befriending, and helping  at Friends of Trindlemoss community events.

We would like to hold social events in the evening as winter is nearly here our Focus group have asked if we can put in for funding for the following items. With the following items we can have the oppertunity to fund raise ourselves and have games nights, bingo nights and fun nights. 

 Wireless  PA System - £200

pool table - £420

Curryoke Night - £260  Social event for 80 people (Curry, poppodoms, Rice) Pizza's for non curry lovers & refreshments for Tikka Bar

Entertainment  DJ - £100

Barnardo's Stronger Families provides support across North Ayrshire to Kinship families. We have funding in place for core staff to facilitate groups, sessions and activities however we require funding to provide for resources, refreshments and if we wish to work with local artists. We worked with local artists recently on graffiti projects and creative arts groups with young people and the feedback was overwhelmingly positive. Those young people recommended that other young people and adults get to experience groups/sessions similar to those that they took part in. Benefits of creative arts sessions are socialisation, reducing isolation, positive communication, learning new skills and discovering artisitic talents. It can build confdence and self-esteem. For Kinship carers it will allow them to take some time for themselves, relax, spend time with other people in a similar situation to them and to build up positive peer relationships and supportive networks. For Kinship families to take part in sessions together, it will allow them to spend quality time as a family, having fun, communicating, supporting each other and relaxing together. Barnardo's will provide the staffing and promotional materials for these sessions.

Costs for 10 sessions:

Venue hire - £150 (2 hours per session)

Refreshments - £100

Creative arts resources - £450

Local artist time - £300

With the funding, we hope to host 2 networking events to attract members to join the community council. The community council works in partnership with several other voluntary organisations across Irvine such as Friends of Redburn, Fullarton Community Association, Marymass Festival Committee and others to run events in the locality and generally foster good relations between groups. By hosting these network meetings, we hope to attract new committee members who can increase our capacity to put on events and build community spirit between voluntary organisations.

The community council previously hosted the Irvine Yuletide event in 2023 which attracted around 10,000 people to Irvine moor. This gave families a chance to take part in free festive activities at a time of year when the cost of living hits hardest. If we can attract new volunteers to the community council, we will be able to put on more events similar to this, bringing people together and creating positive change in the community.

Costing as follows: 2 events 6 months apart

Rent of venue - £200

Promotion, including paid for advertising social media £100

Catering £700 (2 events, 70 people, £5 a head.)

TOTAL - £1000

Our clubs mission is to the give people of irvine and surrounding areas a chance to get physically active and play the sport of table tennis. Alongside playing, our club brings people together from all from all backgrounds and creates an opportunity for social interaction and physical activity which can and does improve their health and wellbeing. Table tennis and sport is one of the best tools we have to improve mental and physical health and table tennis is a sport which can be played and enjoyed by all ages regardless of ages & abilitity. Irvine TT Club priortity is the keep our costs low and affordable for everyone who attends our club night and classes. We continue to offer a FREE first night for newcomers and we have no upfront membership fee. We also provide all relevant equipment at no extra cost such as bats, balls tables and barriers to seperate the playing space. 

We would like to apply for support to assist us to keep our costs low and affordable for players playing at our club sessions. We also want to create more opportunites to play table tennis throughout irvine during the daytime. Our plans is the start a FREE weekly classes outwith the portal in a selected community centres or local schools. This will give irvine locality more opportunities to be active, socialise and interact with people within their community. We aim to call these sesssions "Bat & Chat" as this is what it will do, give people a chance to chat to each other when playing. We also will be starting up a dedicated parkinsons table tennis class at the portal for people with parkinsons to attend.

Breakdown of Costs £350 - 2 tables at £175 each £150 - 5 nets at £30 each £80 - 2 boxes of training balls at £40 each £100 - 20 beginners bats at £5 each £200 - Hall hire subsidy - 40 hours £880 - Total