2020: A thank you and updates

Birmingham Irish • December 13, 2020

You may already know, but since March, we have been adapting our services to best suit our lovely clients and the wider community, and what a journey we have been on together. First of all, we would like to extend an unbelievably colossal thanks to everyone who has helped us, however small.

Over the last few weeks we have been counting just how many people that, through the kindness of the community, our funders and fellow organisation, we have helped this year. It’s safe to say we have never been prouder to be part in the heart of our Birmingham Irish community.

When the circumstances came upon us all in March, our first response was to open an emergency helpline, so every single person who needed urgent help were listened to and given tailored support. So far, our helpline has been manned every single day since March, from 8am to 8pm by our staff and has so far received over 5,500 calls.

Very soon after our helpline opened, we realised that shortages and stockpiling in supermarkets meant that our most vulnerable had no way at all of gaining basic essentials, which was impacting severely on their mental and physical health. We knew we had to help and since then, our Club Together campaign with our incredible friends, the Warwickshire GAA and the local community has allowed us to distribute over 2,920 grocery parcels to the most vulnerable in our community.

As the situation began to evolve in early summer, calls from our helpline enabled us to understand that there was a real need for a hot meal delivery service in the community, as relatives couldn’t provide care in two places at once. Therefore, in early May, we launched our hot meal delivery service which so far has provided over 2,612 nutritious hot meals to families who need it most.

We have also been giving out lunch bags alongside our meals, and to date we have distributed 2,112 of them. We still continue to operate the meal and lunch service on a Monday, Wednesday and Friday and deliver around 360 hot meals per week all across the city.

In June, we began to say hello again to our old clients as our main services reopened, and as a team, our staff worked together to explore additional services to give further aid to our community. From these services, we have strengthened the digital skills of 17 seniors in our community, who were unable to communicate using technology in the first lockdown.

News of the furlough scheme ending then reached us, and we knew just how much devastation it would leave in its wake. With the Christmas season soon approaching, we knew there would be so many children left with no presents under the tree, therefore, we immediately launched our Christmas Toy Appeal.

It’s safe to say that the community response for our appeal soared higher than we thought possible, and with support through new toys and donations through our Virgin Money Giving Page, we were overwhelmed and the sheer generosity took our breath away. To store all of the donations we required a storage facility and to date, we have distributed gifts to over 500 families throughout our city, which parents can then wrap in time for Christmas and leave under the tree.

This time last year, we would never have fathomed our journey together since March. The sheer amount of people we have helped would not be possible without the incredible generosity of our wonderful funders, the kindness of our beloved Birmingham Irish community and the magnificent efforts and strength of our fellow organisations. We would like to extend the most enormous thank you to the phenomenal people listed below, as well as every single person who has donated through our Virgin Money Giving page or a new toy to us.

We wish you all the healthiest, happiest Christmas and as we continue, the strength and kindness shown throughout this year will be paramount in getting through this difficult time. Faith is our key to finish together, and we will celebrate in true Irish style as a community once this battle is won. May God bless you all.

National Lottery Awards for all

Birmingham City Council

Birmingham Irish Society

Cloth Makers Fund

Heart of England Doing Things Differently

Irish Government Emigrant Support Programme

National Lottery Community Fund

Communitas

Irish Youth Foundation

Community-Led Organisations Recovery Scheme (CCLORS)

Archbishop Illesley

Charities Aid Foundation

BBC Children in Need

NHS

TLC Lottery

M. Lambe Construction Limited

Court Collaboration

NNS Ladywood Small Grant Scheme

Tesco Bags of Help Scheme

J Murphy and Sons

Friel Homes Ltd

Lilies Funeral Directors

St Brendan's GAA Club

Sean McDermotts GAA Club

Erin Go Bragh GAA Club

John Mitchels GAA

No5 Barristers' Chambers

Milnes Walker Court Sheltered Housing Scheme

Guillemard Court Housing Scheme of Housing 21

Gillian and all her colleagues at Tesco Monkspath, Solihull

Kiely Brothers Limited

Mick O’Brien and family

Welcome to another Birmingham Irish Association news update

We publish news and project updates keeping you up to date with details regarding our services and events, as well as other local developments and other news that will be of interest to our clients as well as other visitors.