Great success for Derry Churches Trust Developing Women project

The project, funded by the Department of Communities, facilitated the ladies going on a journey of discovery exploring human development in its earliest years and how family life and community life impacts on health and wellbeing over our entire life.

Mary Holmes, Community Relations Manager for the Churches Trust stated she ‘honestly believed’ this group of women were ‘some of the most inspirational people she has ever worked with’.

Mary outlined how the women learned about the impact of adversity on the developing brain in early childhood and the impact this has on a person’s physical and mental health across their life.

She added: “They also learned about how important positive childhood experiences are in buffering children when things aren’t going well.”

Through workshops with Orla Hasson the women went on to look at conflict and how we deal with it in family life and in community life.

“The huge learning point here was that conflict is an everyday part of life,” added Mary. “But we aren’t always taught how to deal with it. The workshops allowed the women to discover how we can move from the position of victim to that of actor, where we can become active in bringing about solutions in both our family and community lives.”

The final phase of the project was delivered by Cara McLoughlin who facilitated the exploration of community issues that were important to the group and how they could help.

Mary said: “The women all agreed that they wanted to recognise the amazing work being done in the Adult Day Care services at the Creggan Day Centre. They reached out to find out how they could help. They found out how important music was to those in the Adult Day Care Centre, particularly live music and, unfortunately, they do not have funding to bring in live music to the centre.”

The women then came up with both a short term and a long-term solution to this issue. The first being to allocate their budget for social action to be donated to the Adult Day Care Services to facilitate bringing live music to the Centre.

A total of £700 was donated and Fidelma Heaney, the Adult Day Care Manager outlines that this will cover the cost of approximately twenty performances over the coming months.

Fidelma also outlined how the visit from the women would be reflected upon fondly for a very long time and that this was just the start of a friendship between the Moor Developing Women’s group and the Creggan Day Centre.

Hoping to form a local community choir, Mary explained: “This is very much the case because the women are now embarking on their long-term vision which is to form a local community choir. The reason for a community choir is twofold, one to enhance the mood and wellbeing through the joy of music for the choir members and their audiences, and secondly, to travel and share the joy of music through services like the Adult Day Care Centre across the City.”

The course participants, Nell McCool, Maura McCool, Kate Carlin, Marie O’Reilly, Elizabeth O’Doherty, Stella Gallagher and Bridget Curran are now reaching out to their community and have got the wheels in motion.

At their recent celebration night event the women were presented with a beautiful book, ‘From Trauma to Resiliency: Trauma-Informed Practices for Working with Children, Families, Schools, and Communities.’ This book complements the women’s new understanding on human development, and how they can use this new information to understand what leads to negative or positive health and wellbeing in family and community life.

This group of women have worked throughout this project and have connected as friends. They continue to work together to achieve common goals. And as Bridget says, “for all the girls and women out there, don’t be afraid – we’ve got your back!”

Anyone interested in joining the new Developing Women’s Project which is running until March 2024 or would like further information on the local community choir can contact Mary at [email protected].