BNI Foundation Impact

My Sisters Place is a domestic abuse service in Middlesbrough, offering a range of practical and therapeutic interventions to women affected by domestic abuse. We never turn a woman away. The Service improves the lives of women and their children, and supports them to live safe and free from abuse.

The donation from the BNI Foundation, this will be used to support children and women to have access to safety measures such as mobile phones, panic alarms and other practical measures which enable them to keep themselves safe at a time of crisis. 

Grace House is incredibly lucky to have fantastic garden space at our premises in Sunderland and we use these to support, encourage and educate the children who come to stay for short breaks.

Our gardening project will allow children to get out into the garden, plant seeds, care for them and watch as they grow into a wide range of vegetables, including potatoes, leeks, strawberries and tomatoes. The children will get an amazing sense of achievement out of this and then they can then use the vegetables in our cookery classes where they can taste new things and learn about how to use different vegetables in different recipes both sweet and savoury. 

Supportive will be using the donation to replace booster cushions & seats that are now not seen as legal safety equipment. We transport all the looked after children within County Durham to and from their foster homes and place of education, with the use of our Volunteer Drivers. The amount of looked after children in Durham County Council’s care, totals around 700 children and the majority of these require some form of seat. From all of us at Supportive and our Volunteer Drivers, we would like to thank you all for the continued support.

The money raised from the evening will support children accessing our services. For example  £50 could  allow a child  the opportunity to join one of  our Children’s Bereavement Groups, which specialise in helping children when someone special to them has died. These therapeutic sessions ensure that children feel less alone in their sadness and they are supported to learn to manage the grieving process.  We believe in adding life to days when adding days to life is no longer possible. For children using our support we offer a bright and happy  environment which supports them when they need it most.  

The donation will be spent with Gurney Pease Primary School.  For the second time the children of Gurney Pease have , with the help and tutoring (mentally and physically) of Breathe Easy Darlington been working on the structure and function of lungs, air quality (pollution and smoking) and the importance of exercise. Several members of Breathe Easy Darlington join the whole school for an afternoon of outdoor fun and  exercise, as well as to judge the artwork the children have produced on the theme of ‘Love your Lungs’. Some of the pictures will adorn the walls of Ward 44 (Respiratory Ward) at Darlington Memorial Hospital. Those involved include Gaynor Williams,  Chairperson of Breathe Easy Darlington and their Specialist Respiratory Exercise Trainer, Victoria McFaull and led by Linda Cernik. 

Children’s counselling is a psychological therapeutic intervention using creative play, mindfulness and narrative. This helps a child to explore and understand their emotional distress or difficulties and strengthen their resilience and resource. This in turn lowers the state of arousal allowing the child to remain in an attentive, calm cognitive state allowing them to concentrate and learn more effectively. When a child is experiencing confusing feelings or emotions, their brains will operate in a state of arousal affecting the child’s ability to absorb new information. This donation will add to our valuable counselling services provided by FACT.

Research evidenced that 83% of children were traumatised following a hospital procedure. Children would regress into bed wetting, sleepless nights, nightmares or being withdrawn. The Little Journey App, was created to help children 2 – 3 weeks prior to admission, so they will understand what will happen on their journey through hospital.

The new research has showed that using ‘Little Journey’ reports of trauma or regression have reduced to less than 20% - your donation will help to fund the   headsets to use with smart phones at home supported by their families. 

The donation will go towards helping us in our dream to provide a new charity boutique/community kitchen and multi- function /drop in centre to be used , free of charge for local families living with a cancer diagnosis or a cancer bereavement .

We will be teaching child carers how to cook etc. in the new kitchen and be able to help even more children who are sadly battling cancer, with a great benefit of being local for them to attend instead of travelling out of the area . We will hold support groups, cooking lessons, mother and toddler groups, school education visits, open days to help educate the community and local businesses.

The kitchen, drop in/multi function room will run alongside our therapy room and wig bank which we already run on a daily basis. This will allow us to continue supporting hundreds of local families throughout the north east . 

MAIN operates throughout the north east providing a range of services for people affected by disability. Sensory Rooms are specially designed rooms which combine a range of stimuli to help individuals develop and engage their senses. These can include lights, colours, sounds, sensory soft play objects and aromas all within a safe environment that allows the   person using it to explore and interact without risk.

 Sensory Rooms have the benefits of increasing concentration and focusing attention developing hearing, sight, smell, touch and taste, heighten awareness and improve alertness, improve   coordination and motor development and promote cognitive development by increased brain function. MAIN will put the funding raised tonight towards a new sensory room. 

YMCA Teesdale works in one of the most multiply deprived areas of Teesdale. Our After School Project has a big focus on providing young people aged 7 - 11 years the opportunity to engage in positive activities that they would otherwise not have and the chance to learn new things; from telling the time, to cooking new and healthy meals, to helping with maths (they have to budget how to spend £250 they won themselves from the High Sheriff's Award), to playing sports and being healthy both physically and mentally.

Our After School Club is a safe space for our young people, to belong, contribute and thrive and will benefit from this sponsorship from the BNI Foundation and this event.