Triangle Housing Community FUNd for Armagh

Triangle Housing decided to use the PB funding process as a mechanism to issue our Housing for All funding from the Department for Communities NI. Housing for All projects provide integrated social housing for people from both Catholic and Protestant backgrounds in Northern Ireland to live beside each other. The themes included Good Relations across community environments, health and well-being, and community building between people from different ages, abilities and cultural backgrounds.

We rebranded it as Triangle Community FUNd for Armagh and used leaflets, online and face to face meetings to promote the opportunity. We also delivered a series of group and one-to-one workshops to help applicants understand the process to encourage uptake.

Unfortunately, due to COVID19, we had to cancel our live event scheduled for 3rd April 2020. However, as restrictions relaxed by the end of August, we reorganised everything for 18th September 2020 on a much smaller scale with a limited number of 60 attendees at the Armagh City Hotel. Risk Assessments, numerous virtual meetings with applicants, support networks etc were needed to support everyone involved. The applicants, Armagh City Hotel, Sport NI and Triangle Housing worked together to enjoy our first Community FUNd event.

We’re lucky to have Maurice Millar, our Housing Manager, who already had a wealth of knowledge and experience about PB having delivered a couple of earlier schemes in Coleraine and Cushendall. This provided a lot of learning for us and enabled us to redesign the process to make it clearer and build better relationships with the applicants.

We designed a PB Procedure based on a SMART approach to fully explain and evidence the whole process for other stakeholders, applicants, funders and auditors.

Each group had to submit a video and deliver their presentation at the event. Some applicants needed our help to do this.

Young members of the Dancing Queens group provided a dance performance. The Armagh Set Dancers provide an opportunity to keep traditional dancing going across the communities.

Armagh City High School pupils will be developing a community garden in the school grounds with teaching and guidance from Armagh Men’s Shed.

Armagh Rural Transport has provided much needed collect and delivery services to pharmacies, supermarkets, medical appointments and more during COVID19.

Armagh Foodbank will continue to provide much needed sustenance to many families and individuals.

REACT NI addresses community need through reconciliation and community relations work, education, youth development and training.

Cross community church groups such as Armagh City Vineyard and Vibe NI who both run a variety of programmes and events to engage the vulnerable and isolated, youth groups and individuals.

The Crafty Knitters make blankets and gowns for babies in hospitals and further afield. Another older group, The Westenders, meet weekly and organise a wide range of cultural and interesting events. Due to their age group and various health conditions, many of these members have had to isolate during COVID19 and adapt to online communications.
REACH Mentoring will be able to develop an essential 1-1 service in local schools for pupils who need support or facing mental health issues.

1. Talk to other PB providers to find out what works best – they’ll be happy to share.
2. Make it exciting and EASY to apply for, keeping it informal on the surface, make it FUN😊.
3. Keep the support going after the awards – you’ll want them to spread the word and reapply in the next round of funding. This will also help them to recruit new members and support. You’ll also want to gather feedback for future funding and lessons learned discussions.

Anyone interested in more detail on this or would like to see our PB Procedure and workshop materials, can contact either our Housing Manager, Maurice.millar@trianglehousing.org.uk or our Tenant & Community Engagement Officer, Marion.graham@trianglehousing.org.uk.