New view issue 27

VIEW

Social Affairs magazine for community/voluntary sector www.viewdigital.org Issue 27, 2014

IS A PERFECT STORM IN HOUSING ABOUT TO BREAK?

Reports on pages 4, 5, 6, 7

C O N T E N T S

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Page 8 - Lord mayor launches Belly Laughs comedy festival Pages 10&11 – VIEWdigital team heading to CultureTECH Page 12 – Are food banks the answer to poverty? Read Dr Conor McCabe’s view Page 15 – New writer for VIEW dips his pen into craze of Ice Bucket Challenge

VIEW, Issue 27, 2014

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Editorial

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Una Murphy, publisher

ccess to water, food and a decent place to call home are hallmarks of a civilised society. But on the island of Ireland if you are on a low income you could have problems accessing all three.

In the Republic of Ireland water charges will be one of the highest rates in Europe.

Working as a journalist for the BBC in Wales I researched how so called ‘trickle flow’ water meters were installed in some homes when families failed to pay.

We will come back to water poverty in a later magazine.

In this issue of VIEW magazine we have asked commentators to look at the worrying growth of food banks and the private rented housing sector.

The private rented housing sector can offer choice for some but for an increasing number of families and older people there are problems of insecurity of tenure and poor standards.

Professor Paddy Gray from the University of Ulster looks at the prospect of increased homelessness if

Brave: Roisin Pelan who has raised nearly £4,000 for cancer research

buy-to-let landlords – many who have a few properties – go to the wall in these uncertain financial times.

It is hard to believe that going to food banks has now become an accepted part of life for many people – not only those on welfare benefits. Dr Conor McCabe assesses this phenomenon for

VIEW and his observations make interesting reading.

We also preview the CultureTECH festival of media and technology including the Digital Technology Conference on ‘Community Day’ September 18.: https://getinvited.to/culturetech/culturetech-digitalskills-conference.

VIEWdigital also is offering free media training at CultureTECH: http://www.nwcn.org/content/viewdigital-free-mediatraining-north-west-commun ity-network-september-18 Cork journalist Tom Hickey takes a wry view of the ‘Ice Bucket Challenge’, one of the most successful social media campaigns for charity. If you want to take on the challenge here is a link to the Motor Neurone Disease Just Giving page: https://www.justgiving.com/ mndassoc.

I would also like to flag up my brave niece Roisin’s Just Giving Page for cancer research.

• Find out more about her story at: https://www.justgiving.com/roisin-pelan/2.

Photoline

Photographer Kevin Cooper has more than 25 years experience in Press and PR photography. Kevin works to a wide of clients in community and voluntary sector organisations as well as the trade union movement.

For quotations, contact Kevin Cooper at Email: photoline@supanet.com T: 028 90777299 or M: 077 12044751

VIEW, Issue 27, 2014

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Are we sitting on a housing timebomb?

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By Una Murphy

OUSING expert Professor Paddy Gray has warned of a possible “timebomb waiting to explode” in Northern Ireland’s private rented sector. Banks are currently repossessing homes from buy-to-let landlords making the families who live there homeless.

The private rented sector in Northern Ireland has grown rapidly in recent years and how accounts for nearly 17 percent of all households or nearly 130,000 homes.

Many householders faced with landlords going bust will have to apply for homeless status with the Northern Ireland Housing Executive, but public housing stock has dwindled in recent years.

Most landlords in Northern Ireland’s private rented sector are believed to be part-time or ‘amateur’ landlords operating on a small scale letting one or two homes Experts believe that individual investors with large property portfolios in the buy-to-let private housing sector who have no other source of income could be badly hit by a hike in mortgage payments Professor Gray said: “The question is what will happen to tenants living with the uncertainty of losing their home if the landlord goes bust and banks repossess the home?

“It is unlikely that banks will continue to rent the property but will go for a quick sale to recoup part of their loss selling the property at auction at well below market value.

“The tenant will become homeless but where do they go? It is unlikely they will be able to afford to buy. If awarded homeless status by NIHE they may have to move to an unfamiliar area without the community network they have built up in their existing location”, Professor Gray said.

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Professor Paddy Gray from the Univers housing crisis facing those living in priva

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he private rented sector in Northern Ireland has experienced rapid growth in recent decades. In 1991, there were only 28,600 (five percent) dwellings in the private rented sector, by 2001 this had grown to 49,400.

In 2006, there had been a further substantial increase in the sector to 80,900 but the most rapid period of growth took place in the five years from 2006 when an investor-led housing boom resulted in a substantial increase in both the supply and demand for private rented accommodation and results of the 2011 House Condition Survey confirmed that the sector had increased to 125,400 dwellings and as a proportion of the overall stock is now higher than the social rented sector.

There are many reasons why this increase in private renting has grown particularly since 2001. Many new landlords entered the market, particularly in the period 2004-2007, when house prices were increasing substantially.

Evidence from a landlord survey carried out by the University of Ulster

Warning: Professor Paddy Gray

and published by the Northern Ireland Housing Executive (NIHE) showed that a quarter of all landlords had entered the market in the previous five years and a further 31% between the previous six to 10 years.

More and more people have turned to renting privately as house prices rose beyond affordability levels, particularly amongst first time buyers though not exclusively and many potential buyers were outbid by investors. After the crash in 2007

although prices reduced, finance from lenders became much more difficult to obtain due to more stringent controls on who could borrow, and the requirement for large deposits.

Social housing also contracted due the failure of housing associations meeting targets, housing being sold off through the right to buy and not being replaced and the NIHE having to cease building. This has led to rising waiting lists and in many areas offering no hope of applicants ever getting housed.

Although the private rented sector is now playing such an important role in the NI Housing market there may be a time bomb waiting to explode. Although there are no recent figures available, the 2010 UU survey showed that over a third of landlords (38 percent) had loan to value ratios of over 76 percent and a quarter of had interest only mortgages.

As house prices have continued to fall since then with only a recent upturn, many more could have very high loan to value ratios and indeed quite a few may actually be in negative equity.

This is worrying as, with low interest rates many may be just about able to maintain ownership of their

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sity of Ulster tells VIEW of a potential ate rented homes in Northern Ireland properties but with headwinds such as rising interest rates on the horizon, welfare cuts kicking in meaning lower income from rents and the possibility of banks and building societies changing loans from interest only to capital and interest payments which would substantially increase monthly outgoings.

More recent research carried out

by Sheffield Hallem University for the Department of Works and Pensions shows that by the end of 2013, 44 percent of landlords said they had been affected by arrears as a result of changes to the levels of Local Housing Allowance (LHA).

So with landlords facing decreases in income through welfare reforms and possible increases in outgoings through possible changes to their loans and interest rises many will struggle to remain in the sector and will certainly not have the finances to maintain their properties. The question is, what will happen to tenants living with the uncertainty of losing their home if the landlord goes bust and banks repossess the home? It is unlikely that banks will continue to rent the property but will

go for a quick sale to recoup part of their loss selling the property at auction at well below market value. The tenant

the affect this will have on households living with this uncertainty.

In 2010, 38 percent of landlords

will happen to tenants living ‘ What with the uncertainty of losing their

’

home if the landlord goes bust and banks repossess the home?

will become homeless but where do they go? It is unlikely they will be able to afford to buy if they have already been struggling to pay their rent. If awarded homeless status by NIHE they may have to move to an unfamiliar area without the community network they have built up in their existing location.

Research carried out by the University of Ulster for the NIHE and published in January 2014, 45 percent of tenants cited family/personal and area/neighbourhood reasons as to why they chose to live in the private rented sector. So losing their home will also mean losing their family and neighbourhoods and goodness knows

had loans of more than three quarters of the values of their properties. This amounts to 47,654 properties using 2011 figures from the House Condition Survey on the basis that there are a total of 125,400 properties in the private rented sector. If even half of these were to disinvest, or were repossessed, we could have a situation of more than 20,000 households being threatened with homelessness placing further pressure on an already overburdened social housing sector where there are around 40,000 households currently on the waiting list.

So do we have a timebomb waiting to explode?

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Lord Mayor of Belfast Nichola Mallon at the launch of this year's Belly Laughs Comedy Festival. The event in Belfast begins on September 24 and runs to October 5 Image: Kevin Cooper

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Practical advice and a sensitive personal approach. We pride ourselves on our unrivalled commitment to clients’ needs.

Edwards & Co. solicitors advises charities and the voluntary sector in Northern Ireland on a wide range of legal issues including charity creation, charitable status and constitutional matters, trading and commercial arrangements, employment law, finance, fundraising and property law, as well as dealing with the Charity Commission for Northern Ireland.

Our team offers a full range of legal services including mediation, wills,criminal law, clinical negligence and personal injury claims, as well as family/matrimonial work.

Contact Jenny and Teresa: Edwards & Co. Solicitors, 28 Hill Street, Belfast, BT1 2LA. Tel: (028) 9032 1863 Email: info@edwardsandcompany.co.uk Web: edwardsandcompany.co.uk

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VIEWdigital team: From left, VIEW editor Brian Pelan, VIEW co-founder Una Murphy, trainers Angelina Fusco and Willis McBriar

Meet VIEWdigital te V

IEWdigital community media social enterprise and the North West Community Network (NWCN) have joined forces to mark Community Day on September 18 at CultureTECH, Derry.

VIEWdigital is offering FREE media training for community groups led by media professionals, including former BBC NI TV Editor ‘Newsline’ Angelina Fusco.

The event will take place at Holywell, DiverseCity Community Partnership, Bishop Street, Derry, on September 18.

Registration is essential so if you are interested please get in touch with NWCN at; info@nwcn.org or call 028 7127 9090.

Young people will be challenged to come up with tech solutions for social good during CultureTECH. If your community or voluntary group wants to use technology to solve social issues then SI (Social Innovation) Camp wants to hear from you.

Students in Further and Higher Education will bring their energy and creativity to solve challenges that are easily understood and that are ripe for innovation Glen Mehn, Managing Director, SI

Camp at the Digital Skills conference at CultureTECH on September 18 to explain the challenges.

This will be followed by a gathering at Crumlin Road Jail, Belfast, in November. Young people will develop innovative creative solutions to the challenges posed by community and voluntary groups. There is a £5,000 cash prize up for grabs for the team and ideas with the most potential to make an impact.

For more information, contact SI Camp's Patricia Flanagan at patricia@sicamp.org

Digital tips: Naomh McElhatton Camp, said: “The web and related technologies hold huge potential to create change in many different ways: how people hold those in positions of power accountable; who they rely on to provide the services they need to live healthy, happy lives; or how they make a difference to something that affects them. But for any of this to happen, we have to understand what people really need and start building the technology that can help – which is what Social Innovation Camp is all about.”

There will be a session about SI

THE Welsh Government has set up a Digital Inclusion initiative to help small business and communities to make the most of the internet.

Communities 2.0 includes a scheme aimed at the Community and Voluntary sector in Wales offering digital technology support. The initiative is part of the ‘Delivering a Digital Wales’ strategy which prioritises support to the most digitally excluded groups in society by helping them overcome barriers, building their confidence and creating opportunities for them to use new skills.

Andrew Jacobs from the

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eam at CultureTECH Welsh Government’s Digital Inclusion will be among the speakers at the Digital Skills conference at CultureTECH, Derry on September 18.

The conference will focus on how skills can be improved within the community and voluntary and business sectors.

The event is part of CultureTECH, Derry City Council and Go On NI to have 1,000 Digital ‘Champions’ trained up to help people with basic digital skills.

Naomh McElhatton of Digital Advertising NI and Northern Ireland’s Digital Champion will be on hand to spell out what is being done to improve digital skills in Northern Ireland. To get tickets for the conference click on this link: https://getinvited.to/culturetech/culturetech-digitalskills-conference CultureTECH 'Community Day' is all about media, technology and getting people more familiar with everything digital. VIEW asked Sinead Lee, Ofcom Northern Ireland, what the organisation is doing to promote media literacy.

“At Ofcom, we define media literacy as the ability to use, understand and create media and communications in a variety of contexts,” said Sinead.

Media literacy: Sinead Lee “It enables people to have the skills, knowledge and understanding to make full use of the opportunities presented by both traditional and new communications services.

“It also helps people to manage content and communications, and protect themselves and their families from the potential risks associated with using these services.”

Older People are using tablets to get online in a Advice NI project which uses volunteers to show

residents in sheltered accommodation how to get information from the web.

The 12-week iPad classes are part of a Supporting Active Engagement digital inclusion initiative which takes place at more than 50 Fold Housing Association sites in Northern Ireland.

Residents find out about what type of benefits they are entitled to as well as information about energy prices.

Advice NI's Sarah Lynch, the project manager of the iPad Training 'Supporting Active Engagement' initiative, said: “So much of life now exists online.

Older people want to do the iPad training to spend a social hour together and learn the language around social media.

“We work in rural communities with people who are socially isolated.

“Each group is different; some people want to know about Skype while others want to find out about Google Maps,” she said.

• If you want to find out more about VIEWdigital media training classes, contact Una Murphy at unamurphy@viewdigital.org

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Dr Conor McCabe historian and author

‘Food banks exist today to justify unliveable wages and financial profit’

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n December 2013 the Scottish government published a report into the dramatic rise in food banks over the past four years.

It found that ‘welfare reform, benefit delays, benefit sanctions and falling incomes have been the main factors driving the recent trend observed of increased demand for food aid’ and that reports suggest that these factors are replicated across the UK. It is not just welfare recipients who find themselves availing of food banks but also people working on low pay and reduced hours in the brave new world of the trickle-down economy.

Access to the food parcels is conditional: in the case of the Trussell Trust, the single largest producer of food banks in the UK, each request is judged by a ‘care professional.’

The charity of course has an interest in framing its operating procedures in such managementspeak, but striped of its marketing lexicon it is clear that what these banks demand of people is that they beg for food.

Sherlock Holmes is not the only Victorian to have been

reinvented for the 21st century – the middle class do-gooder is also back to sort the wheat from the chaff.

There is, of course, a central government report into food banks. The Defra-commissioned report was completed in the summer of 2013 and quietly shelved until February 2014.

It blamed, among other things, “high global food prices” for making “food proportionately less affordable for low-income households in the UK”. What it failed to mention was the role of financial speculation in creating a price bubble in wholesale food prices.

In 2013, researchers at ETH Zurich and the UN Conference on Trade and Development found that up to 70 percent of commodity price changes, including wholesale prices for wheat and other grains, were due to ‘self-generated activities’ on financial markets.

Deborah Doane, director of the World Development Movement, in a letter to the Financial Times in March of that year said that it further supported “the substantial body

of evidence that excessive financial speculation is distorting commodity prices”.

The very same markets that were saved with unprecedented state funds in the aftermath of the 2008 crash are now a causal factor in the growing unaffordability of food.

This is before we factor in the millions of jobs lost to the speculative mania, as well as the substitution of low-pay and zero hour contracts for a living wage.

Poverty is structural. The re-emergence of food poverty in the wake of the banking crisis is no coincidence.

The use of bailout funds to garner profits for financial institutions via speculation on wholesale food prices; the litany of tax avoidance measures which serve to make such speculation a profitable game; and the utter refusal to engage in genuine job-led growth – in all of this we see that food banks are a plaster not for the poor but for the rich.

Food banks exist to justify unliveable wages and financial profit. The fact that they ease those nagging middle class consciences is an added bonus.

New Suite of OCN NI Awards & Vocational Qualifications The Open College Network Northern Ireland (OCN NI) continues to be the awarding body of choice within the Community and Voluntary sector in Northern Ireland. The quality and flexibility of our qualifications enable organisations and communities to grow and develop whilst providing education, training and learning within a national quality framework.

In response to the current economic agenda, demand from employers and government departments, OCN NI has developed a suite of new awards which offer the opportunity to deliver small, flexible, nationally accredited QCF qualifications in a range of curriculum areas.

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New transition guide to assist refugees VIEW, Issue 27, 2014

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hen people receive refugee status, it is far from the end of their journey. They now need to navigate through the complex process of finding a home, a job, benefits if needed, and generally integrating into society.

They often have a very short period of time to do so in order to avoid falling into homelessness and destitution.

Commissioned and funded by Belfast City Council, Refugee Transition is a guide produced by Law Centre (NI) for new refugees, their advisers and staff in statutory agencies. It is designed to help voluntary and statutory agencies provide a joined up service and prevent unnecessary poverty and homelessness.

This joint project involved Belfast City Council, the Housing Executive, EXTERN, NICRAS, the Law Centre and other organisations that work with refugees and asylum seekers.Â

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Launch: Miliami Unamoyo

It benefited greatly from the advice and insights of refugees who have gone through the process themselves, including Miliami Unamoyo who helped launch the guide at Belfast City Hall.

The guide contains information on finding a home, looking for work, applying for benefits, education, healthcare, family reunion, long term immigration status and more.

At the back of the binder, a log book and document wallet are provided for refugees and their advisers (if they are given permission to do so by the refugee) to record and keep together: A summary of the guide has been translated into Somali, Arabic, Simplified Chinese and French, with funding provided by the Housing Executive.

Belfast City Council, the Housing Executive and the Refugee and Asylum Forum, an umbrella group of organisations working with refugees, are to be commended for this initiative.  • Refugee Transition is available at: http://belfastcity.gov.uk/community/goodrelations/goodrelations-projects.aspx

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Tom Hickey confidential www.hickeysworld.com

Out of nowhere, we were drenched by a deluge of ice bucket challenges

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sually nothing much happens during the silly season of August and newspapers and TV news channels have little enough to fill the news cycle. And then, seemingly out of nowhere, we were drenched by a deluge of ice bucket challenges.

Everyone was doing it: Justin Bieber, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Lady Gaga – even former US president George Bush allowed himself to be soaked by a bucket of ice.

Nearer home, sports stars from Rory McIlroy to Brian O'Driscoll subjected themselves to a quick shower, but this was a phenomenon that embraced everyone from schoolchildren to ordinary folks being doused in their back gardens.

If you switched on Facebook you could see your friends and family members' videos of themselves take a soaking, and listen in dread as they nominated three others to accept the challenge, quietly offering up prayers that your name was not among them.

The ice bucket challenge stemmed from an idea by Corey Griffin, inspired by his friend Pete Frates who has ASL (or motor neurone disease as it's known here). Tragically, Griffin drowned just a few weeks ago, but by then the success of the phenomenon was apparent.

In the Republic and Northern Ireland the challenge was embraced and supported by thousands of people, so much so

Splash story: VIEW editor Brian Pelan does the Ice Bucket Challenge that hundreds of thousands of euro was raised for the Irish Motor Neurone Disease Association.

And yet the challenge has been criticised by some. True, the plethora of videos clogging up your Facebook timeline can be tedious – there are only so many you can view before boredom sets in.

For those in the voluntary and charity sectors struggling to raise vital funds, it shows how thinking outside the box can work wonders

and help the bottom line.

It made a welcome change from the usual fundraising efforts and gave many of us a laugh – and a wetting.

And it has raised the profile of a deserving cause and hopefully helped the battle against a dreadful illness. Meanwhile, I'm hoping I have avoided the ice bucket dunking myself.

So far nobody has nominated me, but I’m willing to endure a few seconds of suffering for a good cause. Just not now.

When Harry met Chris

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Arts and Disability Forum chief executive Chris Ledger talks to Harry Reid about the work of the organization she leads

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ate, flustered and embarrassed, I crash through the doors of Belfast’s Dark Horse café-bar and immediately find my state of inner agitation at odds with the calm of the early August afternoon interior.

In contrast to the breathless disheveled figure I’m cutting, Chris Ledger emanates an aura of calm industry at a corner table where she has set up a mobile office.

Approaching apologetically, my feeble attempts at contrition for my tardiness are waved away with a welcoming smile. I breath a little easier as the warm facial expression reassuringly emphasizes the lack of sarcasm as Chris gestures at the papers and phone in front of her and says: “Never worry, while I’ve been waiting I’ve had plenty to do.”

As we start to discuss the work of the Arts and Disability Forum, or ADF, it becomes apparent that the wide-ranging and ambitious activities of the organization she heads up always leaves Chris with plenty to do.Yet the evident enthusiasm and good humour she displays in the face

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Chris Ledger: “Our work is rooted in a philosophy that see of what our conversation reveals as a truly ferocious workload are the hallmarks of someone who has definitely found their vocation.

“All of ADF’s work is rooted in a philosophy that not only rejects, but actively seeks to challenge, the overt and more insidious forms of negative attitudes to disabled people that continue to be so pervasive.

“It’s an ethos that I am personally very at home working within, and as it informs everything we do, it ensures that as an organization we truly fulfill our mission to nurture, encourage and support deaf and disabled artists.”

Such encouragement and support comes in a great many forms including a year-round programme of showcasing deaf and disabled artists’ work in the organisation’s own gallery on Belfast’s Royal Avenue and through exhibitions, shows, performances and tours mounted at venues across the region.

ADF also administers a programme of grants on behalf of the Arts Council.

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eks to challenge the overt and insidious forms of negative attitudes towards disabled people.”

“Through the grant scheme the ADF has been able to offer a degree of financial support to enable deaf and disabled artists to pursue excellence in any medium of cultural expression they practice, be that producing literature, music, photography, drama, a strand of the digital arts or whatever.”

In addition, ADF has developed relationships with counterpart agencies across Europe and beyond to bring the work of internationally renounced disabled artists to these shores and runs a spectrum of training for local disabled artists with an increasing emphasis on helping equip them to effectively promote their work.

At the time of our encounter the ADF’s Bounce! Festival was uppermost in Chris’s mind. Began in 2012 to mark that year’s Paralympics in London, it has quickly forged a place as an annual fixture in the cultural landscape, with its third edition taking place over the final weekend in August at venues, including Belfast’s Lyric Theatre and the Black Box as well as ADF’s own gallery.

The success of Bounce! has been such that plans are

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Images: Kevin Cooper

already in place to expand the scope of the festival in 2015 to include a mini Bounce! programme for children.

As September dawns the ADF looks forward to pushing on with its mission to deliver ambitious high quality work.

In the immediate future this desire is exemplified by the organization staging Liz Crow’s multimedia performance ‘Resistance’ in late October and early November.

Designed to provoke reflection on the Nazi’s grotesque T4 programme, which saw the organized murder of hundreds of thousand of disabled people, and consideration of contemporary everyday echoes of the attitudes that led to this systematic campaign of elimination, this is a show that promises to be as uncompromising as the ADF itself.

Information on the ever evolving work of the Arts & Disability Forum, including details of ticketing for ‘Resistance’, can be accessed via http://www.adf.ie/

Our Man Abroad

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Former TV cameraman John Coghlan tells Una Murphy how covering a war in Angola led to him deciding to set up a charity to help the disabled in Africa

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or former RTE cameraman John Coghlan it started when he was covering the war in Angola.

“I saw a woman with three children – two abled bodied and one disabled – at a feeding centre,” he said.

“She was dividing out the food – 80 percent for the two able bodied children and the rest for herself and the disabled child.”

The impact this made on him led him to set up Disability Aid Aboard when he left RTE in 2004 after covering many conflicts throughout the world, including Ireland.

His charity, which receives administrative support from Northern Ireland charity Disability Action, has recently received £250,000 for the Mwanza employment project in the Lake Victoria region of Tanzania.

“Women and men with disabilities are taught tailoring and other vocational skills such as carpentry, metal work and food processing to set up micro businesses.”

Belfast-based charity Tools for Solidarity provide the tools for the businesses, including sewing and knitting machines. Tools for Solidarity was set up 30 years ago – http://www.toolsforsolidarity.com John is also a keen advocate of getting trade unions involved in backing the co-op business set up through his training projects “Many of these women and men had nothing and had been begging for a few pence a day. But due to this training and being able to set up their own businesses they are able to get enough money to get an

education for their children.

“You should see how proud they are when they show you their union card.

These people have had nothing and now they are part of a big organisation through their trade union membership,” John said.

‘50 million people living in Africa are suffering from a disability’

Beneficiaries of the programme are given training on how to manage co-operatives and information on employment rights.

John said that people with disabilities in developing countries are the ‘forgotten voice’ of international aid. He added that 50 million people with disabilities live in Africa but only two percent of them have access to any form of aid with more than two thirds of disabled adults living in abject poverty.

John, who lives in Belfast, now spends a large part of his time visiting projects for the disabled in Africa as well as seeking funding for further programmes.

The former RTE cameraman said: “Who would have thought that this would all have come about through filming a woman and her children at a feeding station in Angola.”

• Visit website at http://disabilityaidabroad.net

Helping hand John Coghlan meets village during one o many trips to

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d: n ers f his o Africa

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THE BIG PICTURE

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Supporters of Gay Pride in Northern Ireland recently unfurled a massive rainbow banner across the Peace Bridge in Derry Image: Gavan Connolly www.gavanconnollyphotographics.com If you would like your community/voluntary sector organisation to be selected for The Big Picture, send your image, marked Big Picture entry, to editorial@viewdigital.org

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GIRLTECH power unveiled

Some of the girls who took part in the summer scheme at WOMEN’STEC

WOMEN’STEC recently held its first ever GIRLTECH Academy, a week-long summer scheme for young girls, aged eight to 14, where they enjoyed finding out about computer programming and practical DIY skills.

The girls spent their mornings working with a software engineer from Kainos Software learning how to build a computer game and about website design. During the afternoon sessions, the girls worked with power tools, creating planters and learning mosaic techniques.

The world of computer programming is still very male dominated and

Encourage: Lynne Carvill

WOMEN’STEC, which is situated at Duncairn Gardens, north Belfast, wants to encourage young girls to think about STEM

Images: Kevin Cooper

(Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths) subjects and STEM careers as viable options.

Lynn Carvill, chief executive of WOMEN’STEC, said, GIRLTECH Academy is about encouraging girls into non-traditional careers. “We want to play our part in facilitating young women into traditionally well-paid careers.”

Belfast’s Deputy Lord Mayor, Maire Hendron presented the girls with certificates of achievement on the final day of GIRLTECH. • For more information, visit: www.womenstec.org