YWAF - Youth With A Future

Working with young people of Mendip

• Chairman’s Report 2007/8
• Treasurer's Report 2007
• Fundraising

YWAF has enjoyed a very exciting year where we have moved into new areas of fundraising and this has enabled us to give away more to both individuals and groups.

One of our most exciting challenges in 2007 was putting a team together for Glastonbury to hand out bags for life at the festival gates. The team was managed with ease by Jackie Garbett. This created a great bond between the young people in Grace Harris House and our other team members. We were complimented by the organisers as very hard working and reliable and have been invited back this year. What a fantastic achievement!

I feel our link with Grace Harris House has grown stronger this year and many of the young people have been keen to do fundraising for us. Some came and helped on stalls at our Christmas fair. We have also helped them set up a Tenancy Association giving them a louder voice when they have concerns.

YWAF have been more involved this year with the YMCA and continues to offer their young people emergency and activity funds. We are about to start a moving in scheme similar to the one we operate at Grace Harris House where every new resident is given a £100 Argos voucher to help them personalise their room.

With the expertise of Keith Wetherill we have established an YWAF website which has enabled our details to be accessed easily by other groups and charities. (WWW.ywaf.org.uk)

We have been privileged this year to have Nick May organising our funds and offering us his professional advice. We are very grateful to John Cridland for auditing our accounts again. Our thanks to Maggie Cridland who has stepped down as secretary after many years and we are very thankful she is still able to remain on the committee. We are grateful to Elaine Brightwell for offering to take over this very demanding role.

I would like to give a big thank you to all the committee for all their support to me over this past year.

YWAF came into being at the end of 2001 upon the winding-down of Shepton Housing Association Limited (SHAL).  Its surplus funds were transferred across to YWAF.  Looking back over the past six years YWAF has managed to raise just over £21,000 and spend £19,000.     

As YWAF Treasurer, it has been a busy, productive and enjoyable first year.   A detailed annual accounts' statement will be circulated at the forthcoming AGM.  The key numbers for the year ended 31st December 2007 can be summarised as follows:

• Income             £7,235     
• Expenditure      £5,054 
• Net Surplus      £2,181

Cash at bank at 31st December 2007 was £37,737.

The 2007 income of £7,235 was double that of 2006.  Income was derived from three sources: subscriptions & donations (£1,167); fund-raising (£4,114); bank deposit interest (£1,954). 

The largest income element (57%) came from fund-raising activities, in particular the excellent work carried out by a team of volunteers at the Glastonbury festival.  Other fund-raising activities included the Christmas Fayre,

Collett Park Day and Every Penny Counts.  My youngest daughter certainly enjoyed counting all those loose pennies with me! 

Expenditure at £5,054 was just over a £1,000 ahead of the previous year.  Money given to young people and their supporting organisations in the Mendip area was approximately split between homelessness initiatives (60%), deanery youth work (20%) and other individual grants (20%).  Expenditure at Grace Harris House and Mendip YMCA was sub-divided between emergency funding, activity funding and Argos vouchers for new tenants.  Money given to the YMCA activity fund was used towards the resident’s trip to use a climbing wall.

The YWAF committee meets about ten times a year to consider all funding requests at which a monthly financial statement is supplied.

The year's surplus of £2,181 has been added to the cash reserves.  Just over £37,500 was held on deposit at the yearend in order to accrue maximum interest.  84% of this total was classified as 'restricted' funds, specifically to be utilised for homelessness initiatives.  

The first quarter of 2008 has been fairly quiet on the treasury front - although this will no doubt change shortly!  I will provide an update of the current year's financial position at the AGM.

Wot a whopper!!! Last year proved to be an outstanding success on the fundraising front, raising an excellent total of £4,114 significantly, a substantial amount was raised from outside church circles, namely Glastonbury festival where we raised over £3,000.

This year we have been able to work alongside the staff and residents of Grace Harris House (GHH), raising money at Glastonbury and our Christmas Fayre, which raised over £400. A huge thank you to the hard working and deeply committed staff that work at the house, it has been a great privilege to work alongside them. We also benefited from Nick May’s ‘Every Penny Counts’ initiative, which I hope to continue this year at events including Collett park day.

As usual, we did our stint at Collett Park day, the money from this provided camping equipment for the residents that joined us at Glastonbury.

We have been invited back to Glastonbury this year, and have been able to invite residents and staff from GHH to join us again. Let’s pray for better weather!! We will also be having a stall on Collett Park day, so any donations i.e. sweets, jars, new toys or soft drinks would be very much appreciated.

We are always open to (uncomplicated) fund raising ideas from members, if you have any thoughts please feel free to contact me on 01749 342103.

Finally, thank you to all those that have supported us in so many different ways and let’s look forward to another bumper year.

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