CRIS was recently invited to attend an evidence session with the Northern Ireland Assembly’s Committee for the Executive Office (TEO). Lisa Dietrich and Dr Emily Stanton were delighted to have an opportunity to share the impact of CRIS’s Buddy Up! project funded through the TEO Urban Villages (UV) Initiative which operates across all five UV sites and engages a total of 32 schools to date. We are excited to be continuing to work on this cross-cutting project over the next year! CRIS was invited to speak after having written to the committee to detail multiple impacts created recently through delayed funding on organisations from the Community and Voluntary Sector (CVS). CRIS used the occasion to directly appeal to Government to move forward with their commitments to implement multi-annual funding as outlined in the New Decade New Approach (NDNA) agreement. CRIS stressed the limitations of the single-year funding model as delays can reduce the capacity for co-design and a truly collaborative approach, which is viewed by government and the CVS as necessary to work with complicated issues and themes that often require generational change.
CRIS plans to follow up with members of the Assembly to continue to advocate on this important issue. The management and Board of CRIS would like to sincerely thank all the schools we work with and the Community Led projects also serving Urban Villages areas who supported this briefing and presentation by participating in surveys that were collated as part of evidencing the case.