Family Services Festivities
Blanket Appeal Launch
Depaul Ireland's family services brought a really good turn out of service users at the Blanket appeal launch at City Hall. Parents and children were delighted to be included in the event and visited the Christmas Market to make the most of the day.
Photoshop Workshops and Exhibition
Three of our services users from Mater Dei took part in a photoshop training program with the West court centre. As part of the course they were asked to take photo's which illustrated their feeling on being homeless. The work carried out was excellent and 5 of the pictures were exhibited in the Red Barn Gallery as part of events for Homeless awareness week. Staff and service users took time out to visit the exhibition and were very impressed at the amount of attention the photo'd from Mater Dei received. The exhibition is also due to travel Cork in the coming weeks. Westcourt very kindly offered to print and frame all five photo's and they now take pride of place in our lounge area. We intend to work more with Westcourt in the future and will be running a similar course with them in the coming year.
Service of Life
We had a really good attendance at the service year and everyone really enjoyed the experience. Sr Nuala prepared a lovely reflection on the lives of people who have been born into our services as well as for those who sadly passed away. We hope to encourage more families to attend next year and hopefully they will assist with the preparations.
Information Day
Service users and staff organised a local information day to celebrate 5 years at Mater Dei. The event was very well attended by all local stake holders and some very useful links came out of the event. For example the PSNI offered their bus and a driver (free of charge) for service user trips in the coming year. They managed to persuade them to do Santa for the Children and got invited to the Annual North Belfast PSNI Christmas Get together in Belfast Castle. They also made some very good links with local training providers
Christmas Trip To Funworks
Parents and children from Mater Dei enjoyed a trip to Fun Works Activity Centre as part of the Christmas festivities.
Christmas Arts and Crafts
Service users, volunteers and staff made their own Christmas cards and decorations in the run up to Christmas. They personalized babbles for the tree and Cards representing Mater Dei which were used to send to local stake holders.
Pensioner's Christmas Party
This Christmas, the staff and Service Users in Cloverhill made Christmas dinner for local pensioners and the fine folks at The Meat Merchant kindly provided the turkey and ham. The afternoon was a wonderful chance to do something special for the ladies and all had an enjoyable time!
Hamper Donation
Many thanks to the Allianz team in Belfast who donated a generous hamper of practical and luxury foods for Christmas festivities in our Family Services in Belfast as well as for Stella Maris, Castlehill and Foyle Haven.
Santa's Visit
The local PSNI very kindly offered to do Santa this year. Santa's visit coincided with the service users Christmas dinner and our CEO's visit. The service users were really excited and dressed especially for the occasion. The majority of families attended at one stage of the day and the children were delighted to see Santa.
Christmas Morning Breakfast
Some of the service users thought it would be nice to have a Christmas day breakfast for everyone in the hostel, especially for those who would not be spending time with family over the holidays. Staff helped with the preparations and everyone of the service users and there visitors sat together and had breakfast on Christmas morning. The children played with their toys and watched a Christmas movie before going to get ready for the day. The atmosphere was amazing and everyone really enjoyed it.
Christmas Day Dinner
A number of service user's spending Christmas alone in our Family Services. The staff who were spending Christmas day decided to make dinner for everyone who was staying. Staff helped with the preparations and in Mater Dei alone, approximately 5 families had Christmas dinner together in the lounge.
Belfast Giants Visit To Mater Dei
Mater Dei had a visit from The Belfast Giants Hockey Team on Christmas day. They distributed toys to all the Children and provided some of the service users with free tickets to a match in the Odyssey Arena.
*Thanks to all who helped make Christmas so special in our Family Services this year.
**Thanks also to the teams in Mater Dei & Cloverhill for sharing their Christmas stories!
