WHY WAS OUR CHARITY SET UP?

In Christmas 2018 the residents of newton Aycliffe showed collaboration for a fight to save Santa tours on Christmas eve. From this, a small group of people decided to form a group raising money around Christmas time as Mr & Mrs Claus and grotto events, distributing the funds to people in need in their hometown. It became apparent that the residents in newton Aycliffe and surrounding areas didn’t just need help at Christmas time but throughout the year and the fact that people kept asking for help suggested it needed to expand. Therefore this small group of volunteers decided to form a group to help fundraise and support local families, help those in need and help bring the community together with events they would normally not afford and Community Spirit Newton Aycliffe was formed. We gained charity status in 2023 charity no. 1205139

Reviewing the statistics and reports there is a need in Newton Aycliffe for organisations to support local families, provide affordable and accessible activities to bring the community together and to help those in need affected by health issues, crime and poverty.

Community spirit will offer Basic life support classes to any one who wishes to attend delivered free by fully trained basic life support instructors.

HOW WAS YOUR CHARITY SET UP?

The organisation began with a group of people meeting and putting ideas together that would help the residents of newton Aycliffe and surrounding areas. Advice was sort and we initially decided to run as a charitable organisation as we did not expect to exceed the desired amount required for full charity status. We applied for a community spirit bank account and had 4 trustees, with a chair, secretary and treasurer.

The local working men's club was happy to be our hosts and so the big club home of Community spirit was formed. It was decided that a monthly disco would help bring the community together and allow families to attend an event they would not have afforded to attend. Money at these events are raised via donations.

WHO IS INVOLVED IN YOUR CHARITY ?

Community spirit is run by a small group of volunteers who organise and run family disco's, and other seasonal events such as santa's grotto and street collections with Santa, mrs claus, the elves and their very own sleigh.  This is how we get the community involved and how we raise funds to perform 'random acts of kindess' for the people of newton Aycliffe and surrounding areas who are in need.

We work closely with Palram and previous years have ran a free two day Christmas extravaganza event, where everyone was welcome to attend and have free activities and free gifts. We take referrals from newton Aycliffe police for people who have been victims of crime and who are left in poverty as a result, and use our funds raised to help them.

We work with numerous other organisations and take referrals from Durham County Council, the local Health Visitors, One-Point, social workers, Health visitors, the fISCH team and other charities  These local service providers contact us about helping their clients who need help due to financial hardship, poverty, ill health, the donations we receive help them with services or goods they require.

The funds we raise and the donations we are given means that each year we provide thousands of punds of food and toys at Christmas for families in need, we provide 50+ gift bags for residents in nursing homes who have no friends or relatives, 100+gift bags for the local children's home.  We use donations to help support local children's groups such as the shine choir, the brownies and scouts, trying to encourage young children to engage with the local community.

We use the funds we raise to help support the local wildlife and animal sanctuaries gifting money to NASSL and the local hedgehog rescue to provide food and shelter.

We use our donations and funds to help refugee families settle into life here with furniture, clothing, helping them with shopping and taking them on free day trips to help integrate into society.

We run free basic life support classes by fully qualified instructors to businesses, schools, individual's and other organisations, in the hope we can improve the quality outcomes of peoples lives in the event of any emergency.

We work with police and local organisations to help reduce anti social behaviour , crime and shoplifting by providing the local shops with walkie talkies and offer posters with where people can seek help in the aim to prevent not prosecute.

FUNDING

we collect donations at all of our events and run raffle stalls and tombola's to generate more funds. We receive donations to run the discos from the local town councillor and the big club.

We use our social networking sites to request clothing and furniture to allow all preloved items to be given to those most in need and avoiding extra waste being taken to landfill sites.

Most recently our Christmas extravaganza has created a lot of funding and interest from a lot of local business's. PALRAM has agreed to sponsor the extravaganza yearly and are also donating a storage unit for us to hold furniture and equipment.

We will also look at funding through other grants and donations

Basic life support and bystander CPR

Background: There is a higher incidence of cardiac arrest in economically deprived areas; however, data show that bystander cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) in those areas is lower. This results in lower survival rates, placing those communities at a double disadvantage.31 Jan 2022 National Institutes of Health (.gov)