Local church leaders had a meeting with the Dearne Area team this week to review the Summer Fun days held in July and August. We are profoundly grateful to them for their collation of statistics and all the hard work they put into getting funding for these fun days and into organising the days with us.
There is far more to such events than mere statistics, but it is still wonderful to know that a total of 427 children attended these 6 events, with a total number of attendances at 593.(Some enjoyed the days so much they came to more than one event!) 58% of all school-age children who attended receive free school meals, which was one of the funding criteria from organisations such as Feeding Britain. A total of 994 meals were provided at these 6 Summer Fun events.
Part of the aim of such fun days is to give people an opportunity to volunteer (to ‘do something’ in their communities), and the ‘social return on investment’ (worked out by how many volunteer hours were used and giving this a commercial value) equated to a staggering £4,215.12. Put another way, this is how much it would have cost to PAY people to do the amount of work church members and other members of the community gave voluntarily to their communities. You are all amazing!
Other organisations attended the fun days to let people know about the services they provide in our local area; it was a great opportunity for networking. Dearne and Thurnscoe Family Centres received over 45 new registrations from the Summer Fun events, for example.
The events also gave the Dearne Area team the opportunity to ask local people what they like about their area and what they would like to see introduced, information from which is used to plan future events and target future funding. Not surprisingly, children want outdoor spaces and parks to be improved and looked after and are keen to see a variety of youth provision in the area. All of this information will be used to inform future planning.
In the meantime, we look forward to helping with other fun days in the new year and to showing God’s love to our community through such events. Truly, we love where we live and are with God in the community, with God for the community!
